I’m often a little wary of travel brushes; some of the applicators in the mini sets are fiddly and too small to be of any real use. Not so, thankfully, with the Laura Mercier brushes in her Deluxe Travel Brush Collection. The quality is just perfect and really, the only way in which these differ from the standard full-size is that they are double-ended: half the handles, twice the fun!

In this deluxe collection, brushes with similar or complementary functions have been paired up and forced to share a handle which, in my view, is no bad thing. I get annoyed when I have to rummage for the right tool for the job, so I quite like the fact that here my precise eyeliner brush is accompanied by a smudger and that my eye-crease brush has a chunky, “all-over” shadow brush at the opposite end of the stick.

There’s an eyebrow duo, too, and a brush for cream concealer and for concealer powder (designed to be used with Mercier’s Secret Camouflage) and there’s also a full-size cheek colour brush. Total value, if you disregard the sticks that have been done away with? Well, the cheek colour brush and the double-ended shadow brush is worth around £90 already, and I can’t be bothered to tot up the rest! Hundreds of pounds, at any rate. Feel free to work it out for yourself on SpaceNK if you have a pressing need to finish the job!

 The deluxe brush set costs £67, comes with a very lovely case (hard) with a handy detachable inner pouch (mesh and magnet) and would be a brilliant introduction to the world of top-quality makeup brushes. If you’re still on the hunt for that elusive gift for someone special (ie, yourself) then this could well be it! It’s limited edition for the Christmas period but you can get the full-sized versions of these brushes all year round.

Laura Mercier Deluxe Brush Collection, £67 at SpaceNK.