Let’s take a look at Chanel’s Spring 2020 collection. It all looks so beautiful, especially photographed against the huge booklet they sent along with it – mauves and vibrant sandy corals and pale shimmering champagnes. The colours of a desert as the sun goes down – the collection is called Desert Dream and I think they’ve captured that perfectly.

But what’s worth snapping up and what can you afford to miss, if you’re a die-hard Chanelophile and like to have something from each collection?

Well, I shall get straight to the point – no beating around the proverbial bush – I’d put my money into the foolproof products you’ll use year-round. Or at least into the summer – if you use them at the rate I have been then they’ll never last a year!

Browse Chanel’s Desert Dreams collection*

First mega-buy; the Baume Essential, at Boots here*, which has been reinvented in a warm, coppery-golden shade called Golden Light. This is a great highlighter for darker skin tones, adding a really grown-up sheen with minimal “glitter”. On lighter skin tones it’s more tricky to get placement right, but it’s not impossible – I’d move away from the traditional “swipe along the cheekbone like a snail trail” and blend in well on the areas that the sun would hit, really making the glow part of the skin rather than sitting it on top.

Anyway, the non-pearlescent Baume Essentiel (my review is here) is now firmly one of my favourite makeup staples – it just gives the most amazingly natural dewy finish – but the limited edition Golden Light version is beautiful for the warmer months.

Next best buy would be the Stylo Ombre et Contour eyeliner and shadow pencils, which I’ve used in Mauve and Brun. I know that these aren’t a brand new launch but I hadn’t really had a good try with them and I was surprised to find that the staying power is immense, despite the fact that the liner feels like a soft crayon to apply. I thought it would wishy-washy itself off after an hour or so, but it was stubborn, refusing the cleansing balm and the flannel and only shifting when I went in with a dual-phase eye makeup remover.

You can find the Stylos online here* – if you love a smokey eye look but hate applying liner then this might be your way forward. Scribble on like a child, blend with a dense little brush (this one* from Charlotte Tilbury is excellent) and you’re done. The Mauve is a good colour if you’re really, really low-key and want something barely-there, but opt for brown if you want impact…

Now the lip colours didn’t suit me so much – I tried Rouge Brulant and Endless – and I didn’t get along too well with the shadow quad (the coral shade and one of the mauves had hardly any payoff, which is unusual for Chanel shadows!), but I did become quite enamoured with the Ombre Premiere in Rising Sun; a liquid eyeshadow that left an extremely pretty, warm and flattering sheen.

Do excuse this photo, I took it early on in the makeup routine proceedings and I look a bit like an experiment. But do you get an idea of how youthful and fresh the sheen looks?

So, my picks: liquid shadow (here*), liner crayons (here*) and the Baume Essentiel (here*). That’s what I’d be snap-snapping from this particular collection.

You can find Desert Dreams in its entirety at Boots.com here*.