lipstick

Review: Shiseido Perfect Rouge Tender Sheer Lipstick in Natural Red

By Voxy  |  2010/09/04 18:33 Posted in Makeup, Product Reviews, Quest for the Perfect..., lipstick, red lipstick  |  Comments (3)

For some reason I’ve been on a red lipstick kick lately. While out of town I picked up two red Guerlain Kiss Kiss lipsticks (reviews to come as soon as I can swatch them) and just yesterday I got a lipstick sampler with two red lippies in it. I now have more red lippies than I know what to do with.

Fortunately for me, red lips are super-hot this fall, so at the very least I will be trendy. Poor, but trendy. Students will pass me on campus and say, “Pfft! Typical absent-minded professor, wearing threadbare clothes from 1972 with holes in them. Nice lipstick, though.”

One of my favorite recent buys is the Shiseido Perfect Rouge Tender Sheer lipstick in Natural Red. Wasn’t someone asking a couple of months ago about whether or not there was a sheer red lipstick that would be a good starter red for someone who wasn’t yet red-dy (ha!) to take the plunge to a full-on scarlet? This is the answer to that problem: a sheer, gorgeous, mistake-proof, you-cannot-possibly-go-wrong-wearing-this-lipstick red.

That I even investigated these at all is purely due to the good PR that Inthelab gave Shiseido, which made me think maybe I should reconsider my former not-interested stance towards the brand. She should get a commission!

Shiseido’s Perfect Rouge Tender Sheers come in four colors: Tender (sheer petal pink), Natural Red (sheer deep red), Pout (sheer mauve rose), and Natural Wine (sheer burgundy wine, which I really want to try now). Natural Red looks terrifyingly dark in the tube but it really is sheer. One coat gives a slightly red glow to the lips, and two coats makes them positively pop.

Because it is sheer, it doesn’t stain as much as an opaque lipstick does, so expecting more than three or four hours out of this lippie is as futile as expecting Lindsay Lohan to stay out of jail for longer than six months at a stretch. After the shine has worn off, it leaves only a light stain, but the upside to that is that there’s little chance of it feathering or bleeding into fine lines. There is no scent that I can detect, and it feels very moisturizing. It fades evenly and doesn’t get crusty, so frequent touchups (while inconvenient) are not unpleasant or troublesome.

Close-up and swatch!

Naked lip:

Lip with two coats Shiseido Perfect Rouge Tender Sheer in Natural Red:

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Shiseido Perfect Rouge Tender Sheer Lipstick in Natural Red: $25 (at Sephora, online only)

Provenance: Purchased.

Price/Value Ratio (high-end: poor/fair/good/excellent): Good. Price itself is excellent, but I wish it had a longer wearlength.

Purchase again? Yes.

(Have you used this product? Love it? Hate it? Want it? Give a holler in the comments!)

Review: Guerlain Rouge G Lipstick in Galante

By Voxy  |  2010/08/15 08:33 Posted in Product Reviews, lipstick  |  Comments (4)

Now that I’m back from my summer travels, it’s time to go through the (embarrassingly large) stash of products I came back with and start reviewing them!

One of my trips just happened to be to a city with multiple large Sephoras. (Did I visit them all? Every one? Of course I did!) Some of these stores had displays and testers of products that my own Sephora doesn’t carry and that I’d been hoping to swatch in-store before purchasing. I’ll buy blind online for some things, but I was in the market for some lipsticks and those are just so dangerous to buy unswatched. This is especially true when the price of the lipstick is several body parts and a second mortgage. But I’d been wanting a Guerlain lipstick for awhile, and the Rouge G is their top-line lippie. (I also picked up a few of the less-expensive Guerlain Kiss Kiss Strasse lipsticks, which I’ll be reviewing after I photograph them.) I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to try some on. (Fortunately, this one was the only one that really suited me out of the ones for which they had testers, a small tragedy for which my removable wallet is extremely thankful.)

Guerlain lipsticks are lusciously creamy and have a wonderful lip-feel: smooth and silky but not greasy. They are non-drying and have a slight fragrance, but I don’t find it objectionable, and I stop noticing it as soon as I’m done applying. For me, the wearlength was normal (about 3-4 hours over TFLI); because Galante is a My Lips But Better shade, it didn’t leave a noticeable stain after it wore off. The deeper, more pigmented colors — which are lovely, just not on me — might leave a stain, so you might in effect get a slightly longer wearlength. Anyone who tries to tell you that these are “long-wearing” lipsticks, though, is pulling your leg.

It might seem odd to spend this amount of money on a MLBB shade, which tend more towards the subtle than the sublime, but really, if you’re going to do My Lips But Better, you might as well do My Lips But Way More Fabulous. The description of Galante on the Sephora site is “rosy plum,” and I’d say that’s pretty fair. It’s a color that will be good year-round but that will be particularly nice for fall as it will complement jewel-toned eyeshadows nicely. All the Rouge G shade names begin with G, which I find just a little precious. Then again, I coordinate the color of the pencil I’m using on any given day to match what I’m wearing, so who am I to talk?

The packaging is the other big deal about this lippie. When closed, it’s a heavy, bullet-like thing. In fact, if you were to throw it at someone who was attacking you in a dark alley I bet you could do some serious internal damage. As soon as you loosen the lipstick from its case, the top part opens and a mirror smoothly unfolds itself with the grace and poise of a Ginger Rogers développé. This is utterly captivating for the first five minutes, and I guarantee you will sit there for quite awhile just opening and closing your lipstick and clapping your hands together gleefully. Then it becomes Really Freaking Annoying. It weighs a ton and frankly it’s packaging I just don’t need. The lipstick tube cannot stand up on its own since the bottom is rounded. It’s kind of like a Weeble, except that it does in fact fall down, which is dangerously unsanitary if you’re using it in, say, a public bathroom. Of course, if you actually get out a Rouge G lipstick in a public bathroom, it will probably squeal in horror and dive back into the darkest recesses of your purse.

Close-up and swatch!

Naked lip:

Lip with Guerlain Rouge G in Galante:

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Guerlain Rouge G Lipstick in Galante: $46 at Sephora (you cannot buy directly from the Guerlain website; in fact, much of the time you cannot even get the Guerlain website to load)

Provenance: Purchased.

Price/Value Ratio (high-end: poor/fair/good/excellent): If sophisticated and elegant packaging is important to you, then Good. Otherwise, Fair. I’d rather have the same lipstick in a less luxe case for less money. However, there are lippies on the market that cost more than this.

Purchase again? Probably not. I really hate that packaging.

(Have you used this product? Love it? Hate it? Want it? Give a holler in the comments!)

Review: MAC Pro Longwear Lipcolour

By Voxy  |  2010/03/28 07:00 Posted in Makeup, Product Reviews, lip gloss, lipstick  |  Comments (0)

Favorite. Lip. Color. Product. Ever.

Or. At. Least. For. Now.

Well, it’s certainly in my permanent top 5, anyway. MAC Pro Longwear Lipcolours (and their cousins, MAC Pro Longwear Lustre Lipcolours) are the best long-wearing lip color products I’ve found to date.

Like many long-wearing lip products, these are double-ended wands: one end contains the lip color, which dries quickly to a matte finish and stains the lips, and the other end has a gloss to go over it. The Longwear lipcolors contain a clear gloss, while the Lustre lipcolors have some sort of shimmery gloss (which are not really all that shimmery, so I don’t think you need to fear them). The one shown in the picture is an old limited-edition one called Gypsy Rose, and it’s got a gold-shimmer gloss; the ones in the permanent collection have either clear or silver-shimmer glosses.

The thing about most longwearing lipcolors is that as soon as you put the lipstain on you can feel the moisture getting sucked out of your lips with force rivaling that of an Electrolux. The gloss then becomes a survival necessity, because otherwise your poor dehydrated lips would crack every time you tried to speak or eat. By the time you get to the end of the 8- or 12-hour wear period, you’re counting down the minutes, trying to avoid moving your mouth, and swearing you’ll never, ever do that again if someone will just make the pain go away.

What a nice surprise that these are not at all like that for me. I don’t notice a single bit of dehydration (and my lips tend to be dry to start out with). And the stain lasts all day, through talking and eating. No, seriously, it does! I was astonished, because I’m a big skeptic about that. The gloss lasts the usual amount of time for a gloss, which is to say “not all that long,” but the color underneath lasts the whole day. When the gloss wears off there is occasionally a little bit of residue, but that’s easily removed and you can reapply. And if you don’t like their gloss, it’s perfectly OK to substitute one of your own; you can even add a colored gloss for a custom lipcolor.

The only drawback to these that I’ve found is that they are very hard to color-test. I own three — the Gypsy Rose LE one above and two from the permanent collection: Loyal (which is My Lips But Slightly Terracotta-Colored) and Passion Preserved (which is My Lips But Slightly Darker). Testing them on your hand (as I did) is both annoying and inaccurate. It’s annoying because man, those things STAIN. I wish other things that called themselves lip stains would take a lesson from MAC (why, yes, Tarte, I am looking at you). So once it’s dried on your hand, you will not get it off for two days. Ask me how I know. It’s also inaccurate because if your lips are well-pigmented, the color will look considerably different on your lips than it does on your hand. I had originally gotten a different, lighter color than Passion Preserved and I had to take it back and exchange it because although it was gorgeous on my hand, when I put it on my lips it was way too light and gave me Corpse Lips. (Eeeeew.) But given the depth of the stain, they’re also hard to test on your lips, because you can’t keep swabbing it off and applying new colors — there’s too much residual stain. You can test a couple, but beyond that your lips accumulate so much color that it’s hard to get an accurate look, especially if you’re testing both warm and cool shades. I’d advise taking a lipstick that’s around the color you want to the store or counter with you so that you can at least get close to the right shade/tone. You’ll still need to do some testing, but hopefully this will help you avoid the shades that won’t look good on you (and they all look pretty in the tube, so it will be hard to tell).

You can also mix the stain colors together to create in-between shades, but tread carefully, because once it’s on there, it’s on there. And if you put on too much stain, you will get some crusty residue which is kind of yucky.

I do wish they were a tiny bit cheaper, but they work so well that I feel like I should shut up and count my blessings rather than my dollars. So I will. ;)

Swatches!

Loyal:

Passion Preserved:

Gypsy Rose:

(I am wearing the gold gloss in this picture and as you can see it’s hardly shimmery at all.)

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MAC Pro Longwear Lipcolour and Pro Longwear Lustre Lipcolour: $21

Provenance: Purchased (check your local CCO if you have one for past-season limited edition colors)

Price/Value Ratio (high-end: poor/fair/good/excellent): Fair. I do wish they were about $3-4 cheaper.

Purchase again? Oh, you betcha. “Loyal” ain’t just a river in Egypt one of the shades I purchased.

(Have you used this product? Love it? Hate it? Want it? Give a holler in the comments!)

Review: Elizabeth Arden 100th Anniversary “Red Door Red” Lipstick

By Voxy  |  2010/03/26 07:00 Posted in Product Reviews, lipstick  |  Comments (0)

Elizabeth Arden is truly one of the grande dames of cosmetic lines, and when I say “dames” I don’t mean like Dame Edna. (Perish the thought! The Arden people are squirming right now just because I linked those two together in the same sentence.)

In honor of the 100th anniversary of the line, Elizabeth Arden is releasing a limited edition lipstick in the Color Intrigue Effects formula called “Red Door Red,” a nod to the company’s iconic Red Door spas.

The color is described on EA’s website as “a universal shade of sheer red.” Well, that sounded like a winner, and I have another EA lipstick in this formula that I like, so I thought I’d pick up the anniversary edition.

The color out of the tube is quite bright, very pigmented, and with a tiny bit of shimmer. (Tiny.) It’s smooth and creamy, and like the other lipsticks in the Color Intrigue formula, it has a very nice lipfeel. If you really want a “sheer” application, I think you’ll have to use a lip brush, because one light swipe of the tube across my lips gave me more color than I’d expected. (I used two swipes in the swatch below, just so you know.) It’s very pretty, but it’s definitely a cool-toned red — in natural light it’s more of a cerise than an actual red, really. I don’t know how “universal” it will really be, but I like it quite a bit. It’s bright enough that I’ll save it for evenings out rather than work wear (or I’ll tone it down with another lipstick or stain), but I’ll definitely be wearing it.

These aren’t the longest-wear lipsticks I’ve ever tried, especially if you plan to talk, or eat, or move your lips at all. But they reapply easily and don’t get crusty, which helps. The brighter and more pigmented colors do leave a stain, although in my experience they fade pretty evenly and don’t feather. My one complaint is that the packaging feels a little cheap; the metal of the lipstick cap is awfully thinly pressed and I think I could probably crush it just by looking at it too hard. It is old-style glam, though, and definitely has a vintage feel.

Proceeds from the sale of these lipsticks go to “Look Good, Feel Better,” a non-profit organization which the Arden company describes as “a global charitable organization designed to help individuals with cancer look good, improve their self-esteem, and thereby manage their treatment and recovery with greater confidence.”

Swatches!

Today’s nude lip, and today’s lip with Elizabeth Arden Red Door Red:

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Elizabeth Arden 100th Anniversary Lipstick (“Red Door Red”): $20 at elizabetharden.com and at counters. Limited edition; not sold at other Elizabeth Arden resellers (ULTA, etc.)

Provenance: Purchased

Price/Value Ratio (high-end: poor/fair/good/excellent): Good.

Purchase again? Well, I probably won’t go through it that quickly, and since it’s LE, it won’t be around for repurchasing. How about we say N/A?

(Have you used this product? Love it? Hate it? Want it? Give a holler in the comments!)

Review: Run Don’t Walk to Sephora for Tarte’s “Maureen’s Favorites” Set

By Voxy  |  2010/03/14 07:00 Posted in "natural", Product Reviews, blush, eyeshadow, lipstick, mascara, mineral, steal  |  Comments (0)

If you haven’t figured it out by now, I have a pretty serious crush on Tarte. Like, the blushing and stammering kind. The kind where I don’t want to be caught looking but can’t stop myself. The kind where I write “Voxy + Tarte 4Ever” in little hearts all over my notebook paper.

(I totally don’t do that.)

As is the nature of crushes, I find myself wanting to talk compulsively about the wonderfulness and magicalness of the object of my affections. Now, I am the first to admit that there have been some Tarte products I have not been too crazy about in the past, and their packaging still leaves me baffled on occasion (purple snakeskin condom mascara). And I am not too wild about their lip products for the most part. But nobody’s perfect! I mean, are you going to hold it against Dustin Hoffman that he once agreed to star in Ishtar?

Okay, yes, I am too, I admit it. Bad example.

Anyhoo, this new set, exclusive to Sephora and for Beauty Insiders only — and if you aren’t one already, for heaven’s sake join — is so perfect for me that I refer to it as Vox in a Box. (Well, it’s actually Vox in a Bag, but that doesn’t sound as good.) It’s called “Maureen’s Favorites” because the products are apparently the picks of Tarte’s founder Maureen Kelly. I first saw it online, but for once had the good sense to step away from the computer and check it out in person at a Sephora store before buying. And it is fabulous.

This package of delightfulness contains the following:

• Full size Lights, Camera, Lashes! mascara (the purple snakeskin condom thing)

• Full size Natural Lip Crème Pencil in shade Peaceful (limited edition)

• Slightly-smaller-than-regular-size Lock & Roll Creaseless Eye Shadow Duo in shade Deep Amethyst (new, and also limited edition AFAIK)

• Deluxe sample size Natural Cheek Stain in shade Exclusive (limited edition)

• Deluxe sample size Mineral Powder Bronzer in shade Park Ave Princess

• a purple bag for putting things in, with a purple flower pin which they say you may wear out in public but about which I am HIGHLY DUBIOUS

So, lookit. The mascara by itself costs $19. The lip pencil by itself costs $24. So at $39, this kit is less than the combined cost of the two full-sized products, and you get the others basically for free!

I reviewed the Lights, Camera, Lashes! mascara previously, and I still like the product very much, although I have not warmed up to the … er, wrapper … at all. I also reviewed the Natural Lip Crème Pencil previously, and although I was disappointed by its lack of staying power, that bothers me much less in a product that’s nearly nude to start out with. In the swatches at the end of this post you’ll see that on my skin it looks like quite a bold terracotta color, but lips are darker than skin, so on my lips it is a just slightly tawny nude.

The Lock & Roll Creaseless Eye Shadow Duo is a clever product that has a cream shadow on one end and a matching powder shadow on the other end (which comes out in a ROLLERBALL, which you know contributes to my giddy excitement). You put the cream shadow on first, then set it with the powder, and it’s supposed to last for 12 hours. Most of the permanent Lock & Roll shades are quite light, so you could use them on the whole eye. This dark amethyst is a gorgeous deep warm purple, so using it over the whole lid is out of the question, but near the lashline this will be a great accent color. The size of the product in the kit is 0.12 oz of cream shadow and 0.04 oz of loose shadow; the full-size version is only a tiny bit larger — 0.14 cream and 0.05 loose — and retails for $17.

If you’ve missed my previous posts on Tarte’s cheek stains, these are some of my favorite products on the planet. Most of the ones I’d previously accumulated (True Love, Berrylicious, Tickled, Blushing Bride) were red or rose-colored, with Blissful (apricot-peachy-red) and Tipsy (a less complicated apricot) being the exceptions. This new “Exclusive” shade is a perfect slightly brown neutral. For a no-makeup look, I can’t really think of anything better. I’ve only ever seen the Tarte cheek stains in two sizes: the full-size (1 oz) version, which retails for $30, and these smaller sizes (0.24 oz), which you can only get as parts of samplers or other combination packs. I have sample sizes of Blushing Bride, True Love, and Tipsy, and haven’t even made a dent in them, so I think this will last anyone a long time.

The last product in the lot is the Park Ave Princess Mineral Powder Bronzer. Confession: As a fair-skinned, slightly cool-toned girl, I am scared of bronzers. I have not found a one that has not made me look either dirty, orange, or both. So I looked up some reviews of this product before purchasing and found several from other fair-skinned women who said this was the only bronzer they’d ever been able to wear. So, we’ll give it a go. This is the lighter of the two shades of Mineral Powder Bronzer Tarte offers; on skin it does swatch out a pretty pure bronzy-gold color and doesn’t look orange.

Oh, yeah, and there’s a bag. With a purple flower pin. (I hate these bags that come with kits. Almost all the time they’re useless — and in fact, the last time I bought a Tarte combination set, it came with a bag that was so heinously ugly I kept it just so I could use it to scare off thieves, vandals, and small children. Dear cosmetics companies: Please stop making cheap bags that don’t hold enough product to make it worthwhile; it’s wasteful and adds no value to the package.)

Pics and swatches!

Left: Cheek Stain in “Exclusive”

Right: Natural Lip Crème Pencil in “Peaceful,” which goes on my lips as an almost invisible tinge of warmth

Lock & Roll Creaseless Eye Shadow Duo in Dark Amethyst

(left: cream shadow; right: powder shadow)

(still trying to figure out why skin on my wrist is differently toned in these photos than the skin on my arm; must keep working on photography skillz)

Bag, for those of you who like these things.

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Tarte “Maureen’s Favorites” Exclusive Value Set: $39, exclusive to Sephora

Provenance: Purchased, gleefully.

Price/Value Ratio (high-end: poor/fair/good/excellent): Excellent! Fantastic!! Amazing!!!

Purchase again? I’d definitely buy individual components again, but I doubt I’ll be running out anytime soon (except for the mascara, of course, which I would repurchase).

(Have you used this set? Love it? Hate it? Want it? Give a holler in the comments!)

Beauty on the Cheap: Drugstore Red Lipsticks and Glosses

By Voxy  |  2010/03/07 07:00 Posted in Product Reviews, how-to, lipstick, red lipstick, steal  |  Comments (3)

Last week, LadyStarlight posed the following perplexing puzzler:

So I was in my local WalMart looking at makeup (because I was alone, ie, no boys of any age with me) and saw Cover Girl lipsticks on sale and thought “I would like a red lipstick but… 1) How do I choose a shade that flatters me and 2) Are there any drugstore available glosses or lip stains that aren’t as…noticeable, I guess, as a lipstick?”

And so, I hitched the dogs to the sled, packed up provisions for the long journey, put my affairs in order, and set off on the quest to find some good drugstore red lippies.

(OK, I am being just a tiny bit melodramatic. I got in the car and drove to ULTA. Satisfied?)

I talked a bit about Question #1 in this post, and it fundamentally comes down to the warm vs. cool issue again, just like it does with foundation. If you are cool/pink-toned, look for a neutral-to-blue-tinted red. If you are warm/yellow-toned, look for a neutral-to-orange-tinted red. The true neutral reds, which are hard to find, can usually be worn by either cool or warm skin tones. It can be difficult to tell just by looking at a lippie by itself whether it is blue-tinted or orange-tinted (red just sort of looks red, after all, until you figure out what you are looking for), so I suggest you look at at least two lippies at a time for comparison. The white paper trick is also still a good one. Also remember that your lips are at least a little bit (and in some cases a lot) darker and more pink than your skin tone, so unless you’re planning on covering your lips with foundation before putting on lipstick, you can expect it to look a little different on your lips than on your hand.

It will also depend on the lightness of your skin; dark- and olive-skinned women can wear some gorgeous shades of red that are overpowering on my pale skin. (You lucky ducks!) As I mentioned in my last foundation post, I’m an NW20 — light-skinned, slightly cool. I look best in reds that are neutral to slightly cool. This is not a very wide range (others may have better luck), but within that narrow pie wedge, I can wear things from sheer to full pigmentation and in a range of tints from light to dark. So it’s less limiting than it sounds. I am still a big fan of buying some inexpensive lip palettes and mixing colors just so you can see what looks good on you; then you can take that color to the store and try to find yourself a match in a brand you like.

OK, let’s get to the goodies. I have four products to recommend; I’ll cover them from the most sheer to the most pigmented, starting with the glosses. By the way, the reason I’ve been in such a snit over my missing Lancome Rouge Magnificence gloss is that it’s a lovely, soft, sheer, subtle, neutral shade of red gloss that looks good on top of anything. If you decide to go high-end, I recommend it. I’m sure the lipgloss-eating monster under the front seat of my car would also give it a strong endorsement, since he’s had it for at least two months now. Stupid monster. I’m sure he looks very pretty.

#1. Revlon Super Lustrous Lipgloss in shade #80: Cherries in the Glow ($6.99 at drugstore.com)

OK, so pardon the horrible, horrible skin tone here. I appear to have been zombified when I wasn’t looking. The lighting was bad, I swatched it right over the tendons and veins on the back of my hand, and I was taking the photo with my iPhone;  in correcting the image to accurately render the color of the gloss, I have now made myself a candidate for the next Twilight movie. My apologies. Please don’t let it put you off; this is a good product!

This is, I think, an excellent “starter red.” Because it’s a gloss, it’s nice and sheer. It can be worn over bare lips or, if you’re feeling a little more bold, over another lipstick or lipstain to intensify and redden the color.

I think they’re undergoing a packaging change, but the product should look something like this (minus the “tester” sticker):

#2. Neutrogena Moistureshine Lipsheers in shade #50: Ruby Bliss ($8.99 at drugstore.com)

This is packaged like a lipstick, but has a sheer texture, like a lip balm stick. The color is more intense than a lip balm, though; it may be applied very sheerly or built up for more intensity, so it is a good “intermediate red.” It looks moist, like a balm, but does not have an obvious glossy shine.

I looked on a lot of sites and didn’t see any swatches that actually represented the color of the product, so don’t be alarmed if you go to the website and say, “uh, that can’t be it; it looks too pink/brown/green.” (OK, not green.)

#3. Revlon ColorStay Mineral Lipglaze in shade #545: Stay Ablaze ($8.99 at drugstore.com)

I love this. I very nearly bought all four of the products in this post, but this was the most tempting. This is a beautiful, rich red that is on the warm side, but because it is darker and not fire-engine bright, it will flatter many different skin tones. It has the shine of a gloss and the pigmentation of a lipstick.

(P.S. — Dear Revlon: Your website sucks. I will not send any of my readers there. Plz fix. Love, Voxy.)

Product:

#4. Cover Girl Outlast Double Lipshine in shade #265: 14-Carat Ruby ($9.29 at drugstore.com)

OK, now don’t be scared of this one, but if you are new to red lippies, you will probably want to work up to this one via glosses and less pigmented products, like those listed above. This is a gorgeous, gorgeous red. The Cover Girl Outlast Double Lipshines are double-ended products with a long-wearing lipstain on one end and a clear gloss topcoat on the other. I only swatched the lipstain side here. I was really impressed by both the shade and the amount of pigmentation. The only problem with these kinds of long-wear products is that sometimes the lipstain portion is drying (which is why you get the gloss; that’s meant to keep the lips moist). I didn’t test it on lips, so I don’t know. I do have some other products of this type and in general I like them a lot.

You can also “thin” the application of the stain if it’s too intense for you by putting on the gloss first. Then dab the stain on the center of your bottom lip; rub lips together. Dab additional dots where you need it; rub lips together. If you need more precision to get the cupid’s bow right, use a small lip brush.

Product:

So, there you go. Four good drugstore options for red lippies, from gloss to lipstains. Please let me know in the comments if you pick up any of these products and if they work for you, or if you have other drugstore reds you’d recommend!

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/weglet/ / CC BY 2.0

Review: Tarte Natural Lip Stain Pencil

By Voxy  |  2010/03/03 07:00 Posted in Makeup, Product Reviews, lipstick  |  Comments (2)

Tarte’s new Natural Lip Stain Pencil is, without a doubt, the cutest lip product I’ve seen come out in the last year. It’s a crayon! For your mouth! How Adorable Is That???

Unfortunately, as lip products go, it is also among the least effective. Le sigh.

This product is such a good idea that I almost didn’t want to tell you how disappointed I was. I kept testing it and testing it, hoping I’d be able to come back with a different result. Sadly, I kept getting the same result all the time, which was this: This product is absolutely great for the first five minutes of wear, and then it vanishes. It’s just gone. Where did it go? Maybe it fell into an electromagnetic vortex and ended up on a secret tropical island where it can hang out with Naveen Andrews and Matthew Fox. Maybe it’s hanging out with my Lancome Rouge Magnficence lipgloss under the front seat of my car. I don’t know; the point is, it’s no longer on my lips.

I tested all of the colors in-store, and ended up with the above-pictured Lust, which is, for those of you who are still using black-and-white computer monitors, a bright, slightly cool red. It goes on more sheer than you might guess from the photo, so it is not as intense as it might be. It’s very wearable, I think, and you can build the coverage up if you want more intensity. It also doesn’t need sharpening, which as you know is a big plus in my book. It is peppermint-flavored, which doesn’t thrill me since I don’t really like the use of mint as a lip-plumper-through-irritation, but it’s fairly subtle.

Of course I also have to pick on their marketing language. As you can see on the side of that there box, this product promises a 6,000 percent increase in lips’ moisture content. Really, Tarte? First of all, what does “lips’ moisture content” mean, exactly, and secondly, 6,000 percent of what?

But I’d overlook all that if the product would just stay on my lips! And they do call it a “stain,” so it ought to … well, stain. You know I’m a big fan of Tarte’s cheek stains; they are well-pigmented and last all day, so Tarte clearly understands the concept of “stain.” I’m therefore flummoxed as to why this otherwise-brilliantly-conceived product is just a FAIL in terms of performance. Now maybe again it’s a case of “well, it would last much longer if you wouldn’t do stupid things like talking,” but since talking is a fairly indispensable part of my job, that bit is non-negotiable.

Now with swatch!

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Tarte Natural Lip Stain (Sephora exclusive): $24

Provenance: Purchased

Price/Value Ratio (high-end: poor/fair/good/excellent): Poor.

Purchase again? Nope. You can feel fine about skipping this one. (It is awfully cute, though.)

(Have you used this product? Love it? Hate it? Want it? Give a holler in the comments!)

Review: MAC Viva Glam Cyndi (Lauper) Lipstick

By Voxy  |  2010/02/13 07:00 Posted in Makeup, Product Reviews, lipstick  |  Comments (7)

If you had told me back in 1980-whatever that someday I would buy a lipstick designed by Cyndi Lauper, I would probably have laughed so hard I would have snorted New Coke all over my legwarmers.

However, when the choice is between a lippie designed by Cyndi Lauper and one designed by Lady Gaga, Cyndi is clearly the safer, more conservative choice.

The Cyndi Lauper and Lady Gaga lipsticks are MAC’s latest products in the VIVA GLAM series. Proceeds from sales of products in this line go to the MAC AIDS Fund, which focuses on curbing the spread of HIV and providing assistance and resources to those living with HIV and AIDS, with particular focus on the effects of AIDS and related diseases on women. The campaign also promotes awareness of safe-sex practices and HIV prevention among women and teens.

The Lady Gaga lippie is a pale pink, and when I say pale pink I mean paler than Pepto-Bismol but not all that much unlike it, actually. If you mix equal parts Pepto-Bismol and Milk of Magnesia you’ll probably have the color about right. (The fact that I associate Lady Gaga with Pepto-Bismol and Milk of Magnesia probably tells you something.) I cannot imagine any person it would look good on, including Lady Gaga.

The Cyndi lippie, on the other hand, is a lovely light red with a hint of coral. It wasn’t originally on my shopping list; I had my eye on the Rose Maiden lipstick from the Spring Color Forecast Coral collection, and I usually prefer to make my charitable donations directly rather than through purchasing products, so I wasn’t really thinking about it. As it happened, the other lipstick was too bubblegum for me, but the Cyndi was remarkably nice.

MAC lipsticks come in a variety of finishes and degrees of color saturation; both the Cyndi and the Gaga are the “lustre” lipsticks, which are not quite full coverage with one coat. You can easily build up to a fuller coverage with a second coat, or you can finish it off with a gloss (which is my preferred method, though in this photo I just applied 2 coats of lipstick so as not to distort the color). The lustre lipsticks have a very smooth, moisturizing lip-feel and a subtle, unobtrusive vanilla scent. They wear evenly and do not leave little gritty bits on your lips. They are also friendlier to chapped or dry lips than some other lipsticks. Not all of MAC’s lipsticks are this pleasant to wear — some of the long-lasting products can be drying, but that’s true of most long-wear lip products — but these lustre lipsticks are always nice. Wearlength is average and this color leaves little to no stain on me.

All in all I’m much more impressed than I thought I would be. She bop, indeed.

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MAC Viva Glam Cyndi lipstick: $14

Provenance: Poichased.

Price/Value Ratio (high-end: poor/fair/good/excellent): Excellent.

Purchase again? If I run out; they’re supposed to be available for a year.

(Have you used this product? Love it? Hate it? Want it? Give a holler in the comments!)

Review: Estee Lauder Pure Color Long Lasting Lipstick

By Voxy  |  2010/02/09 07:00 Posted in Makeup, Product Reviews, lipstick  |  Comments (1)

vieux montréal [old montreal] 8.30.08 - 20 by laura padgett.Wasn’t it just the other day that I said that the lip color swatches on Lancome’s website were about as accurate as your average entry in a “how-many-gumballs-in-the-jar” contest? I really didn’t think it could be worse than that, but I am ruefully amused to report that if I’m sticking to my metaphor, then the Estee Lauder website lip color swatches are the equivalent of the same person guessing how many jellybeans are in the jar while wearing a blindfold, facing the other direction, and being on another planet.

Meet Estee Lauder’s website swatch of Pure Color Long Lasting Lipstick in Sangria:

And here it is as photographed in my light tent:

And here is how it appears on me, in the same light:

Right. So. I think there is no doubt that whatever you want to call this color, it is most assuredly NOT the cool berry purplish color on Estee Lauder’s website.

As it happens, I didn’t find out that that was what was on their website until I went to write this blog entry, because I bought this at an Estee Lauder counter and so I saw it in “real life.” A few months ago, Estee Lauder was having a free lipgloss giveaway, but it turned out that in order to get the gloss, you had to let their sales associates do a mini-makeover on you (and therefore try to sell you products, naturellement). So I thought, “what the heck,” and I sat in the chair and the Estee Lauder woman gave me the single worst makeover I have ever had. As a friend of mine in grad school would have said, I looked like a PW, which stands for Painted Whore. She put navy eyeliner on me and wasn’t even within spitting distance of my lash line (not that I would have wanted her to spit on it, but you get the idea), she made my eyelashes crunchy and spiky like spider legs, and she put a blush on my cheeks that was so bright and blotchy that they would have thrown me out of clown college.

As she kept showing me my reflection in the mirror, I had a harder and harder time keeping myself from laughing. Really, I looked completely ridiculous, and I think she interpreted my giggling as pleased approval. So it comes time to do the lips, and she said, “what color lipstick do you usually wear?” and by this point there was no saving the makeover, so I said, with cynical amusement, “you know, I’m tired of wearing what I usually wear. Why don’t you pick something out for me?” — and Sangria was what she came back with. (Imagine my surprise when I actually liked it! Amazing.) Another sales associate came over and said, “oh! you look so pretty!” and it was all I could do not to give her the Glare of Doom. Come on, lady, we all knew I looked like a five-year-old had put makeup on me while I was asleep.

But at least the five-year-old (in the body of the sales associate) had picked a good lipcolor. It must have been blind chance. I don’t quite know how to describe the color. It has the brightness and intensity of a coral, mixed with the depth of a slightly cool red. It is not the color of any sangria it has ever been my pleasure to drink, but whatever. At this point, they might as well be naming lipsticks Green Grass and Blue Sky for all the accuracy they have. It has a silky feel and glides on nicely; it is a good idea to make sure lips are well-moisturized before applying this, as it will stick to little bits of dried skin — sorry, I know it’s gross, but it’s also February, so it’s dry-lip season. There is a very slight fragrance to this, but it’s relatively clean-smelling and is not intrusive (are you listening, Lancome?).

It provides pretty full coverage with one coat and two coats will definitely get you all the way there. One coat plus a gloss makes a nice look, especially if you want to either warm it up or cool it down. For me, a simpler gloss works better with this: clear or a translucent color, minus shimmer or sparkle. There’s enough going on in the lip color as it is, so adding sparkle kind of puts it over the top for me. It does not feather, but it does fade faster than I would like. However, reapplying the gloss will revive the color somewhat, so you can get away with that for awhile instead of reapplying the base coat all the time (I hate that caked-on feeling that can sometimes come at the end of a day of reapplying lipstick).

So, this gets a Foxalicious Paws-Up, but definitely buy at the counter rather than from the website. Try to avoid the five-year-olds, though, unless you enjoy the experience of scrubbing your face at the sink in a mall bathroom.

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Estee Lauder Pure Color Long Lasting Lipstick: $22

Provenance: Purchased

Price/Value Ratio (high-end: poor/fair/good/excellent): Good

Purchase again? Yes, but it seems unlikely I’ll ever reach the end of the tube I already have!

(Have you used this product? Love it? Hate it? Want it? Give a holler in the comments!)

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/laurapadgett/ / CC BY-ND 2.0

Guest Post! Should Auld Products Be Forgot?

By Inthelab  |  2010/01/01 07:00 Posted in Makeup, Product Reviews, Uncategorized, lipstick, mascara  |  Comments (1)

Thanks to Inthelab for providing this guest post!

Should auld products be forgot?

We think not. Here for the New Year we eulogize some products we’ve grown fond of, only to have them rudely removed. We hope some company reps might see this post and reconsider reissuing these great products.

1) L’Oreal Le Grand Curl Waterproof mascara. The best, best waterproof curling mascara ever. Washed off easily. Priced right. Colors were terrific and naturally emphasized lashes. Why do companies have to tinker with perfection?

2) MAC Pearl Glimmerstick in Gingerroot. One of 2 lip color lip liners we’ll be lamenting. I have a fondness for wind-up lip liners, since one can carry them around without fussing with a sharpener. We also have a fondness for lip-color liners that go with most of our lipsticks/ lip glosses.

3) Laura Mercier Automatic Lip liner in Terra Cotta. Another great YLBB (your lips but better) lip liner in a wind-up format. I liked to use it as base layer under lipsticks too.

4) Redken Fresh Curls Curl Activator. Just a hint of coconut in the scent, a lot of curl reactivation without hard crunch in your hair. The new product doesn’t hold a candle to it.

5) Laura Mercier eye shadow singles. I liked the easy-open pans and buying single colors instead of palettes. The new pans are hard for me to open.

6) Oak moss. Though not a product, it’s an essential ingredient in the chypre/green floral/ fougere families of fragrances. For some reason, the European Union’s safety committee singled out oak moss for exclusion from scents. This is because oak moss may act as a photosensitizer: spray fragrance with oak moss on your bare skin, expose skin to sun, you might get a rash. Well, guess what EU safety committee? There are literally hundreds of photosensitizing or otherwise allergenic molecules in fragrances, in cosmetics, and in food. Food! Lavender is allergenic, those with hay fever should avoid chamomile, and oil of bergamot (which comes from the Seville orange and gives Earl Grey tea its inimitable fragrance) is a skin sensitizer par excellence. Singling out oak moss (which means bye-bye to the great Guerlain classics Chant d’Arome, Mitsouko, and so many more) is sheer lunacy. The discerning fragrance consumer knows not to wear fragrance on bare skin when out in the sun. What’s wrong with an education campaign?

7) Chanel Glossimer in Praline. The best rose-beige color, and Glossimer glosses lasted on me a long while.

8) Lancome Bienfait Total Hydration for Oily Skin SPF 15. The best product for skin when using topical prescriptions for acne, so my daughters say. Nothing else like it on the market comes close to it.

Dear readers, this is by no means a comprehensive list. Please feel free to add your own late lamented products. I didn’t include products from the Prescriptives line because I wasn’t sure which ones Estee Lauder might still sell, otherwise Comfort Cream would have been listed here too.