Annabel Rivkin on the best way to shop high end beauty on a budget

Luxury skincare and make-up at high street prices? It’s the dream, right?

Now, I don’t know if you lot know about Beauty Pie, but you need to. It’s an online buyers’ club. Join for a tenner a month and suddenly the highest-end paints and potions are available to you for an actual fraction of retail price.

Beauty Pie sprang from the brain of serially disruptive beauty entrepreneur (Bliss, Soap & Glory, Soaper Duper) Marcia Kilgore, so the products are as authoritative, innovative and well-formulated as any from the beauty fat cats. A superlative anti-ageing moisturiser that would traditionally sell for about £100 is suddenly available for £11.47 because there is no celebrity marketing, no retail mark-up and no middle men. It’s fantastically genius, with one small hitch: many people like to try before they buy — a smear of lipstick, a squirt of fragrance, a swoosh of bronzer.