I have just bought a new handbag that’s the gauge of an A5 envelope. My daily cargo – laptop, purse, at least a dozen outputs for column-testing, plus the well-worn favourites (six rose lipsticks, anyone?) – had reached basic mass and I’d begun to stoop like a retired donkey. So I dumped entire lot on the bed and decided I had to lighten my load.

I’ve been relatively scornful of multi-use goods in the past, partly because my appetite for beauty borders on voraciousness, but also because they frequently promise too much and ebb to deliver properly on anything. But there are some that in reality come into their own in spring. There’s something alluring and freeing about chucking just one, perhaps two things in your area, before heading to the park or beer garden, where improve makeup looks seem overdone and melt off in the heat.

I be hung up on Ilia’s Multi Stick (£30), a satisfyingly fat, solid blusher and lip tint that come around c regard in several colours. I’ve been using At Last, a sheer but unafraid rose that flatters any skin tone, though if you’re sophisticated, the texture of Nars’ The Multiple in Maui (£29) will be more taste. I’m never without a Burberry Eye Colour Contour Stick (£23), because it spits as shadow (smudge on) and soft, natural-looking liner (apply undeviatingly from the stick), and someone invariably asks what I’ve done, as nonetheless the whole thing took hours.

I aim never to apply unworthy on the move (my grandmother would be horrified), but if I must, the most suitable standby is Hourglass Vanish Seamless Finish Foundation Support (£42), which is compact and genuinely doubles up as a great foundation and concealer (the apparition range is extraordinarily good, too).

Surratt’s Artistique Blush in Grisaille (£30; should it till doomsday come back into stock) is my best purchase of terminating year: it works as the perfect taupe shadow for the socket inscribe, as well as great contour or blush, and comes in the slightest of packaging. But my greatest handbag principal of all is Stila’s readily available and not too expensive (given its dual contemplate) Convertible Color (£16). Every shade is lovely, but Peony, a brownie-pink, makes neither thought nor aptitude, and makes everyone look well-advised b wealthier. Just rub gently into cheeks and across the lips. It’s the basic thing that went into my mini new handbag, and purposefulness surely come with me when I inevitably revert to a foot-locker.