Watch Singapore's REAL beauty industry insiders spill their beauty secrets to us

And the Oscars –sorry, Beauty Award – goes to...

Ready for a fabulous #FlashbackFriday? Good. We’re taking you back three days to the 16th iteration of our Her World Beauty Awards, a swanky soiree held this year at the chi-chi club VLV in Clarke Quay.

The ritzy rendezvous was stuffed to the gills with beauty bosses, grooming gurus plus a couple of celebs thrown in for good measure – the preternaturally poised Tan Kheng Hua was our hostess with the mostess, and the party was punctuated with a stellar showcase of Tropicana The Musical, which runs from April 13 to 30, 2017. (Enthusiastic endorsement alert: Book your tix, stat; it’s well worth a watch!)

Then there were the winners – all 168 of ‘em – some of whom were accosted by our intrepid video crew and roving reporter (that’d be yours truly) and impelled to impart their personal beauty secrets on camera, like so:   

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It behooves us at this juncture to provide a precis of just what the Beauty Awards entails. Okay, here goes: The Her World Beauty Awards aims to serve as a definitive dossier of the latest and greatest in the world of beauty. (A blow-by-blow breakdown: Nearly 500 products across 79 categories, appraised by 20 judges and over 1,200 votes. That’s a lot, to put it mildly.)

And because we believe beauty should be attainable for all, we also decided to invite you, dear reader, to choose between a drugstore or department store brand for categories like the crucial cleanser, among other essentials. That way, we freed things up for you to pick one purse-friendly and one luxe version of a particular product.

Hopefully, this ambitious endeavour will provide a clearer picture of what it takes for a product to capture the imagination and ignite the devotion of different groups of people. The results are revealing – if a product scores a hat trick by clinching the Editor's Choice, Readers' Choice and Bloggers’ Choice, you'll know it's quite literally the cream of the crop.

Singing the praises of the finer (and prettier) things in life...

It is this near-obsessive attention to detail that makes our august awards so very special. Just take it from #LadyBoss Penelope Chan, executive editor of Her World: “The annual Her World Beauty Awards remains the most authoritative and credible of its kind in the industry. Every product is stringently tested by an esteemed panel of judges who understand what a woman wants in her quest to look beautiful and feel confident.”

And with that, let’s give some air-time to the cosmetic champs of Singapore’s um, Oscars of beauty, shall we:

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Finally, to the 1,200-odd online voters who voted so fervently to get your favourites into this year's hall of fame: Thank you so much for your click(s). The votes have been tallied and the beauty world has spoken, so bookmark this list for reference the next time you go beauty shopping. Stay beautiful, we’ll catch you next year.