How to be beautiful: Party season? It must be time to get dirty...

Certain occasions in life prompt aesthetic-identity crises. The most severe is one's wedding, when everyone comes over all taupe-eyeshadow-and-chignon, but that is of mercifully limited occurrence. Next are holidays ("With a tan, I will rock turquoise eyeliner!"), which happens as often as one's credit limit allows. The last, however, comes annually – and we are currently teetering on its brink.

Yes, festive-party season is nigh and, with it, the ideological pull of shiny new stuff extending even to our make-up. Soon, those who usually think mascara and Chapstick constitute a full face will uniformly daub on sparkly eye-shadow and be gilding nails for the office party.

Or will they? The arrival of the obligatory winter metallics suggests a different mood. From tarnished pewter to adulterated, sooty bronze, the palette is, well, dirtier – not at all in keeping with the eternal return of seasonal glitz.

There's lustre, but it's muted. As we once more enter the fray of competitive shopping, perhaps these murky metals are a fair reflection of the fact that our joy is hardly unalloyed.