The best makeup gift sets have three things in common: they contain only products that you can’t wait to get on your face, they are a bit of a bargain, and the things in there both work nicely when used all at once and separately, so you feel like you’ve got lots of looks to try.
That last bit is crucial: there is always a slump between Christmas and NYE, which makes it the perfect time to experiment a bit and have a play with makeup in time for ringing in the new year. So if you haven’t yet perfected a winged eye, statement lip, or glittery shadow halo, you’ve got a week where time stands still and you can crack out all your products and give different looks a whirl.
Looking for more Christmas gifting inspo?
- The best Christmas skincare gift sets for the friend who loves to *glow*
- The best Christmas gifts for girls with curly hair
- Smart, sustainable and affordable gift ideas for women
And yes, I am choosing to partially ignore the ‘gift’ bit in ‘makeup gift sets’ because the best are really damn delightful, so I think you should probably get one too, while also treating a makeup lover in your life.
And if you need to justify it to yourself at an especially spendy time of year, you get way more for your money when you buy a good set than when buying individual products alone. Convinced? Here’s what to buy…
The Best Makeup Gift Sets
Here are 6 of the very best makeup gift sets to make sure makeup lovers in your life (including yourself) have a very merry Christmas…
Pat McGrath Celestial Nirvana Eye Shadow Palette, £76
Not a gift set per se, but the best gift you could ever give a makeup lover in the form of 18 of McGrath’s highly-pigmented, variety of hues.
Try them as a cloud of colour paired with lashings of mascara, as a liner slicked across your lash line, or just blend swirls of them together.
And if the gorgeous packaging and array of shades wasn’t already enough to entice you, Pat McGrath is currently offering 35% off sitewide and today is the last day for guaranteed Christmas delivery – go go go!
Benefit Merry Mini Mail Holiday Set, £19.50
There are three things Benefit is famous for doing very well indeed: brows, lashes and miracle skin products. This set contains all three, housed in a collectable Benefit tin (perfect for storing shadows or makeup sponges in, by the way).
I’d buy this for the Bad Gal Bang mascara alone, which grabs onto and volumises even the wispiest lashes, but I would make good use of all three.
Nars Orgasm Triple Threat Cheek & Lip Set, £36
Think of Nars and you immediately think of its iconic orange/pink blush, Orgasm for good reason; it’s the perfect colour to bring your face to life.
This contains the OG blush, the multipurpose stick (which looks amazing on eyes paired with mascara), and the lipstick (top it with gloss when you’ve got a hangover for the hit of colour you need to hide that telltale pallor).
Emolyne Lip Kit, £39
If you don’t yet know about Emolyne, you need to do your beauty homework; top makeup artists increasingly have kits crammed with the highly-pigmented lipsticks that come in cool pink packaging.
This makeup set contains the classic velvet lipstick, its defining lip liner, and the gloss lip, meaning you can choose any one of the six colour ways and wear it with whatever finish you fancy. Port Elizabeth would have my money for the perfect blazing red lip.
Too Faced Christmas Bake Shoppe, £45
These three face and eye palettes cover the neutral colours enormously well; think warm shades of mocha and chocolate for the ultimate nude eye in a variety of finishes.
Truthfully, I’d buy them for the cookie scent alone!
No7 Limited Edition Beauty Vault, £35
Fancy a really comprehensive gift set? This is it, and in the (rather delightful) gold storage box, you’ll find a really good neutral eyeshadow palette, two liquid eyeshadows which make the easiest but most stunning addition to your NYE makeup look, a luminous powder highlighter, a limited edition lipstick, lip pencil and two lip glazes, as well as two brushes and a handful of eye makeup staples.
In short, this is the gift of glowing makeup all wrapped up into one.
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