Oh, my Beauty Heart, be still, be still, be still! Do summer palettes get much prettier? The Terra Tropica from Guerlain is definitely right up there with the most desirable makeup morsels of the summer. And this is full summer – high summer – that we’re looking at now, not your namby-pamby easing-yourself-in kind of summer. It’s total beach babe bronzage with highlighted cheekbones and that kind of dusty, sandy skin that works so well with tousled, sun-bleached hair. All faked, of course, now that faking is de rigueur and the lying-on-tin-foil-whilst-basting-oneself-in-oilve-oil approach to sunbathing is (thankfully!) not cool or clever. (I never went so far as to baste myself in olive oil, but I do remember my first proper “hot” holiday when the choice of sunscreen was SPF3 or SPF8. Anything higher was just unimaginable – I don’t think that Boots even stocked a higher SPF in those days!)

Guerlain’s Terra Tropica is my kind of full-summer bronzer. Whereas in the winer and the spring I like to have something more subtle – matte, usually, and only a shade or so darker than my skintone – in the summer I quite like to go Glamazon. A warm, suntan kind of bronze with hints of pink to give that authentic “three days on the beach in Ibiza” look without even setting foot on the sand. What I like about Terra Tropica is that despite its brazen looks, it’s actually still quite subtle. Those who like a light, sunkissed look will be delighted with how delicate the “one coat” results are; those who want to go deeper will appreciate the way that the colour builds after a couple of applications. Here I am pre-Terra:

I didn’t actually intend to do before-and-afters, so excuse any little lighting differences, but here I am after two “coats” of Terra Tropica:

“Coats” is obviously a silly word to choose, but you know what I mean. I went in with a large powder brush for one application, taking the powder into the temples and then beneath the cheekbones, and then I went back in with a smaller brush and took the bronzer across the bridge of my nose and further defined my cheekbones. I swept the larger brush across both the bronze and pink areas of the compact to get a really warm and peachy glow, but you could just as easily use one side and then the other, or use only the bronzer and then pick out certain areas with the pinkier tone. It’s a very large compact, so easy enough to keep the colours separate, even if you use a large brush. There’s also the gold overspray on the suns to watch out for – very sparkly, so not ideal if you like your face powders totally matte. Personally, I welcome the added sparkle when we get to July – if I can’t actually go on holiday, then at least I can pretend that my skin is glistening with sea-spray and shimmering away in the sun.

You can find the Terra Tropica at Escentual.com here – it’s £40.50, or £45 from counters nationwide.