At university I found myself being followed through a high-street store while shopping. I could sense the woman behind me, and as I weaved through rail upon rails of clothes to lose her, her footsteps kept pace, echoing mine. When I reached the back corner of the shop there was nowhere to go; I turned, and she was there facing me. “What perfume are you wearing?” she asked, almost hungrily. “Molecule 01,” I whispered back.

This may seem like an overdramatic opening to a beauty feature – and it is – but the conspiratorial, underground allure of the very best beauty products has been around for years. The most cult products are like precious metals or diamonds. And we are prepared to hunt for them.

Molecule 01 by Escentric Molecule is a prime example of the crème de la crème of a cult beauty product. Made up entirely of one ingredient, Iso E Super – what the author and fragrance expert Tania Sanchez calls a “sparkle molecule” – that adapts to each wearer; it acts as a sheen or an 'aura' surrounding you. It marked a turning point in fragrance creation - away from the louder, heady fragrances of the Fifties and Sixties. You can hardly smell it on yourself, but to those around you, the scent is striking.

It was one of the first brands on Cult Beauty, the retailer that changed the beauty game for fanatics by stocking only the very best products. “We started selling it before it was even available on the market properly,” the founder Alexia Inge tells me. “It’s a rare product that has managed to maintain cult status ever since.” She laughs, “when you walk around London what's the smell of the city? Santal 33 by Le Labo. When you walk around the Cult Beauty offices it’s Molecule 01.”

LE LABO Santal 33 Eau de Parfum

LE LABO Santal 33 Eau de Parfum

So what exactly is it that makes a beauty product or brand a cult favourite? “For me, the first thing is efficacy – it has to do what it says on the tin – and then it has to both exceed expectations and create new ones,” says Inge. The original cult products were not necessarily the most glamorous ones with the best packaging, but the ones that worked the best. These products became beloved – people formed psychological connections to them.

“I wrote a list a while back for everyone in the business to think about,” recalls Inge. “In it I talk about the kind of products that make you want to cut open the packaging to get that last tiny bit out or sharpen them right down to the nib, so you end up doing your eyes with a one-centimetre crayon.” We all have these products. For me, it was a blusher I took on holiday from new brand Tower 28 that melted in the Italian sun – and yet I loved so much I continued using it daily; at school it was a Becca highlighter that I'd saved up for and when it crushed after I dropped it, I painstakingly pressed it back together and held it like it was a new-born baby. (When Becca announced earlier this year they were closing their doors, customers flocked to social media to pour out their sadness – a good marker that they had achieved cult status.)

The idea of a cult product implies so much more than just a good or great one. It’s one that unites people, one that sparks desire and often feels scarce. “Today what makes something cult in some ways is supply versus demand. The brands or products that are hard to find. Everyone's talking about them. But they're not necessarily widely distributed,” says Margaret Mitchell, chief merchant at Space NK. “It creates that sense of scarcity: how do I get my hands on it? How do I find it? And that feeling of urgency for the consumer leads to a sense of pride when they finally buy it.”

Tik Tok has changed the game when it comes to catapulting brands or products into cult success. “The life cycle of beauty brands and products has changed so much in the last 10 years. It's much, much faster than it used to be, sped up by Tik Tok. A year ago, Paula's Choice got picked up across the platform and it changed the fortunes of the brand completely. They sold it on that basis. And their BHA continues to be one of the top-selling products on our site by far,” says Inge.

However, it is a balancing act long-term. As Mitchell notes, “one of the things that helps brands to maintain their status and build their desirability long-term is gradual growth, not overnight ‘it's everywhere’ success, because scarcity is an important part of overall brand power. The brands that have ultimately been the most successful with us are the ones which have been measured and not chased short-term volume, but been strategic and gradual with their expansion.”

DIPTYQUE Baies scented candle

DIPTYQUE Baies scented candle

Part of Cult Beauty’s own enduring success comes from the fact that it cracked the way most consumers pick and choose between selected beauty products – not defaulting to entire skincare and make-up routines from one brand alone. “We cherry pick the best products from each brand, which most brands really hate,” explains Inge. They are also often led by consumer behaviour. “We look at all the reviews under the products once a month,” she says of their site. “And if something is getting consistently bad reviews, we’ll call it back in for re-testing. If it performs badly then, we’ll remove it from the site.”

Often, the beauty products that are considered cult to industry insiders are often different to those taken up by mass consumers. Augustinus Bader is an industry favourite, along with Westman Atelier by the make-up artist Gucci Westman; the new Loewe scents too have managed to excite even the most cynical beauty editors. But often it takes longer to translate this, or for it to catch on in the wider market. And retailers take this into account. “I'm always reminding my team that something that might sell really well to mass consumers might not be new to us. For example, Le Labo’s Santal 33 or Charlotte Tilbury’s Pillow Talk. We have known about them for years, but many people are still discovering them,” says Mitchell.

Ultimately, what drives cult status is excitement. There are so many cult products now – a few for each category, with newer launches occasionally bumping out old classics. And, of course, what is cult for one person isn't necessarily cult for another. But these are the products that both immediately get your heart racing and also stand the test of time. So that even when you buy your seventh replacement it feels as if you’ve just stumbled upon the Holy Grail.

The Ultimate Cult Beauty Products