The cult hair hero from £2.83, the love of blusher make-up gurus from £5, and the ultra-smart skin perfector from £5.99… Brilliant budget beauty buys – as chosen by YOU!

Women of Britain, your votes have been counted, and here we have the brilliant Bargain Beauty Awards champions of 2023.

You, the real experts, voted en masse to come up with the 15 cosmetics that will get you through 2023, cost of living crisis be damned.

The weekly column that I write for you – and with you – always contains a mix of affordable and more expensive beauty purchases. However, British women live for a bargain, and this year we all relied on them, so it felt good to celebrate this on our roll of honour.

I am my mother’s daughter – and my even more price-conscious grandmother. And while I’ll never love chatting to Chanel, Guerlain or Sisley, I’m just as devoted to the budget brands I grew up with: Vaseline, Rimmel, Boots No 7 and Batiste.

I especially love that Batiste – appropriately born the same year as the Glastonbury Festival, in 1970 – has taken us from teenagers with oily hair to fifty-somethings with thin hair, via the winner of your hair hero award: Batiste Dry Shampoo & Volume (now £2.83, boots.com). Half a century after that first dirty Glasto, this great British booster is the world’s No. 1 dry shampoo, selling three cans every second.

Tweezerman and Maybelline arrived on these shores in the early 1990s thanks to entrepreneur George Hammer’s groundbreaking Beautique catalogue, to which my mother, sisters, friends and I were all utterly addicted. At the same time, L’Oreal began to transform into the big, price-conscious juggernaut it is today.

More recently, discounted wonders such as Kiko Milano, elf Cosmetics and Superdrug’s fantastic Studio London range have arrived. Studio London wasn’t one of your award winners, but I’ll put my money on it for next year. The Flaunt Flawless blusher (£5, superdrug.com) can be found in every Christmas stocking I put.

L’Oréal Paris scores as high as you would expect from a cosmetic colossus. Mail readers showed their acumen by admiring L’Oréal Age Perfect Collagen Expert Retightening Night Cream (£12.99, boots.com) – an anti-sagging hit. The French giant can afford to democratize its “scientific business,” which means we all qualify as “worthwhile.”

CeraVe, the maker of your top cleanser, and Maybelline are also L’Oréal brands. I agree with you on the brilliance of it.

Maybelline Colossal Curl Bounce Mascara (£11.99, superdrug.com) opens my disappearing, midlife eyes like nothing else. Then I swipe Rimmel Scandal’eyes Waterproof Kohl Kajal (£4.99) across the inner lid and I almost look human. Swipe a little into the top lash for even more emphasis.

The creamy, oil-free texture of Maybelline Fit Me Concealer (£5.99, boots.com) is so famously similar to that of last year’s winner, Nars’ excellent Radiant Creamy Concealer (£25), that the word ‘dupe’ being thrown around. Maybe that’s why you chose it?

During the day, Boots No 7 Future Renew Serum (from €34.95) is your favorite facial care product, and that makes sense.

The Future Renew range, which launched in April to a record-breaking response, features a ‘superpeptide’ blend that has been in research for 15 years. This will be most powerful in the serum, which is known as one of the most effective and tolerated products on the market. Just add SPF.

Kiko’s eyeshadows are top-notch, while Tweezerman’s worthy win reminds me to send my old pair in for sharpening as a cost-cutting exercise in January. I won’t be alone. The brand refurbishes more than 5,000 tweezers every month for free.

Apart from the global giants, one of the elements of the 2023 line-up that I enjoy most is the presence of the small, but no less big, British brand Messiah and Eve’s Body Cleanser 02 (£21, messiahandeve.co .uk).

This is not just because I chose to, but because founder Sarah Sklavenitis deserves credit for launching her amazing company in the wake of the last Covid lockdown in late 2021.

Sarah, a fragrance obsessive, was determined to make our body wash the same quality as our facial care: scented with refinement, joyfully tactile to use and our skin cared for.

Body Cleanser 02 is infused with niacinamide and alpha hydroxy acids to brighten and smooth the face without the mess of a scrub.

Her bespoke aromas are created by a French perfume house and then tailor-made depending on the type of product in which they appear.

They are edited and reworked until Messiah and Eve achieves the olfactory nuance and longevity that gives it its cult status.

My beloved cleanser 02 uses the Modern Unity scent – ​​an extraordinary concoction of blackberry, birch tar and guaiac wood that smells ten times more expensive than it is.

When I breathe it in, life becomes memorable, magical even – worth not just staggering through, but living to the fullest.

And that is ultimately the great beauty of beauty.

It accompanies us through high days and holidays, dark days and mundane things, as we progress femininely. Because glamor is our superpower.

Ruby Hammer MBE

Make-up artist and brand founder Ruby, 62, has been a household name in the beauty world since the 1980s and launched her own range, Ruby Hammer, in 2019.

It’s always nice to see that the things you recommend resonate with readers, and I’m glad they love my favorites as much as I do.

When it comes to foundation, it should match your skin tone perfectly and feel weightless when you wear it. L’Oréal’s True Match Foundation (£11, tesco.com) ticks all the boxes. It has an extensive color range and is delicious, so if you’re not feeling well you can still get a good result.

The same goes for the Kiko Green Me Eyeshadow Palette (£14.99, kikocosmetics.com). Don’t be put off by the word ‘green’; it refers to the natural characteristics of the formulations and not the shades, which are highly wearable.

There are nine in matte, pearl and metallic finishes, making the palette so versatile whether you want an everyday look or something more glamorous.

And finally, it’s no surprise to me that readers have embraced the No 7 Future Renew Serum. We all know that the effects of skin care are cumulative, so while it’s nice to get something as a one-time treat, if you really want results you need something that you can easily buy again and again.

Not only is this serum effective, it’s also affordable, which is what we all want.

Millie Kendall OBE

Millie, 56, is the CEO and founder of the British Beauty Council and has been in the industry for almost 40 years.

It is interesting to note that many of this year’s winners are heritage brands with a legacy behind them. And I think when money is tight, while we like to experiment with smaller, niche brands, they simply can’t compete on price with the economies of scale that more established brands offer.

These bigger brands have the money to spend on research, so they don’t trade on reputation alone. Consumers know that what they buy will work.

And while that’s hard when you’re a smaller brand, I’d much rather people go this route instead of buying questionable dupes or, worse, knockoffs. This can be tempting when times are tight.

I’m thrilled to see Tweezerman getting the Mail readers’ seal of approval: I have tweezers in every handbag and bathroom, by the bed and even in the car. Hold the point together and you can’t see the light of day. That’s why they are so good at grabbing every hair. You can’t get that with tweezers that haven’t been filed by hand.

At a time when people are very price and environmentally conscious, I can see why these are a well-deserved winner.

Emma Gunavardana

Beauty journalist Emma, ​​46, hosts the podcast The Emma Guns Show, which has had more than 15 million downloads worldwide (instagram.com/emmaguns).

I know from my Instagram followers how important accessibility is: we want products that we can get our hands on during the weekly shop or on the shopping streets.

Equally important is value for money, and the results of this year’s awards reflect that.

But I think it’s important to note that while we’re talking about affordable beauty for the masses, it doesn’t mean second-rate beauty. Each individual product can compete with its more prestigious counterparts.

I really think Maybelline makes some of the best mascaras on the market that easily rivals YSL’s.

And elf is one of the best beauty brands out there. It’s just the slightly cheaper packaging that indicates you’re not buying a luxury item, but blindly test the range with products three or four times the price and I think it would come out on top.

Ten years ago, no one really cared about their eyebrows. You formed them by removing hairs and that was about it.

But model Cara Delevingne’s brows and Benefit’s huge range of brow products changed all that, and now we’re obsessed.

I love the whole L’Oreal Paris Brow Artist collection, but the Xpert pencil (from £2.55, amazon.co.uk) is my favourite. The spoolie is strong enough to really define the brow; the pencil is thin enough to draw individual hairs and fill in gaps; and the pigment lasts all day.

Lip products have also disappeared from the market in terms of price lately, so it’s great to see a tribute to good old Vaseline.