I turn my attention to that most often ignored part of our face: lips.
As part of my H/W, I went to my local Sephora store, and the last time I wanted to run away so fast was the prospect of getting married.
SO MANY MANY variants of lipsticks?!!
You’d think that COVID and masks were just an urban myth and that all women cared about were lips…
If you are my age (over 40), you’re likely to have forgotten how to apply make-up, especially lipstick, properly or (that life is finite).
Why is lipstick application important?
Personally, shoddily applied mascara and lipstick are both unforgivable faux pas. Why? Psychologically when you speak to a person, two things draw your attention: their eyes and how they smile. Therefore, both eyes and lips play an invaluable social role. Poorly applied mascara and lipstick can mean you don’t care enough about your appearance.
But lipsticks are a jungle…
The perfect application of lipstick is not something I am great at – so I invite you on my journey of self-discovery. Now that COVID restrictions have lifted/are lifting, I cannot afford to make mistakes with my pigmented, matte lipstick because that ruins your make-up.
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Today’s blog is your basic guide to lipsticks, but before that, the busy bee’s guide to buying a lipstick.
Lip balm and conditioners
Do you remember the time when the only lip balm you had was called “Vaseline?” or, going back a couple of generations, “ghee?”
Well, modern-day lip balms use butter (e.g.) shea butter, cocoa butter, waxes (usually beeswax), and some oil (e.g.) castor oil to produce lip conditioners.
The function of these products is to superficially hydrate the lips so that your lips lose less water and therefore become less dry. Therefore, a good lip balm should reduce flakiness and make your lips soft and supple.
Modern-day lip balms and conditioners range from oils (e.g.) Clarins lip oil to lipsticks with a balm-like texture (e.g.) Pat McGrath’s Lip balm.
Even the most pigmented lip balm will require constant reapplication throughout the day. In my experience, only Pat McGrath’s lipstick lip-balm fulls provide full coverage.
Matte lipstick
A matte lip colour has no shine or glitter, or gloss. I will be honest, I am old school, and I hate matte lipsticks. Such a lip colour may come as a traditional lipstick or a liquid.
Note that as the matte liquid liners dry, they INTENSIFY IN COLOUR.
Because matte lipsticks do not have glitter or gloss ingredients, they tend to be more intensely pigmented products. The fact is that there is simply more room for pigments in the formulation.
Matte lip colour is unforgiving: if you are not flawless in your application, it stands out like a sore thumb and is challenging to correct vs. cream lip colour.
Cream or Satin or Shine lipsticks
This lipstick has a creamier, more hydrated finish – it is less drying than matte lipsticks.
The color was less intense than matte lipsticks, but I don’t think that’s the case anymore. More cream/satin/hydrating lipsticks are becoming intensely pigmented.
Hands down, the best-pigmented lipsticks I have used are:
Pat McGrath
Huda Beauty
Charlotte Tilbury
(and dare I say it) Christian Louboutin. (I know)
Glosses
A gloss makes me feel like a Victoria Beckham impersonator or that I am in school. And that’s all I am going to say about glosses.
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