Best Lipstick Formulas 2019

Name: MAC Satin Lipstick in Pink Nouveau Date Purchased: Feb. 2013 Grade: A Notes: The end of one series means the resumption of another! It’s time for an installment of my Lipstick Chronology. For the past few months, I’ve been reviewing my lipsticks and lip glosses in the order in which I bought them. I chose the phrase "Lipstick Chronology" in part because it evokes one of my academic interests, the history of time measurement. In the Renaissance, scholars used to compile "wonder cabinets" filled with artifacts from different eras; these cabinets (or, in some cases, whole rooms) served as timelines of a kind, illustrations of the development of human culture. I think of my blog as my own wonder cabinet, a timeline of my approach to beauty. Anyway, I've been thinking about how best to complete my chronology. I still have a lot of lipsticks to get through, so I might end up reviewing some of them in groups (e.g. all five of my Maybelline Vivids in one post). Pi...

Finally! It's humid, guys. I know I've mentioned it before, but when the humidity level is 94% at 7:30 am, I can be forgiven for mentioning it again. I don't understand how those of you who live in hot climates with year-round humidity keep your makeup from sliding off your faces, but I need to get in on whatever black magic you're using. In East Coast summers, the only products that don't melt into nothingness after ten minutes outside are mascara, lipstick, cream eyeshadow, and my newest discovery: cream blush. Cream blush! Where have you been all these years? Thousands of miles away at Illamasqua counters, apparently. (The pristine pan, with a drop of condensation that I dared not brush off for fear of marring the perfect smoothness. But now I can't stop looking at that drop. Damn it!) Illamasqua Cream Blusher in Zygomatic is a blush of many superlatives. It's my first cream blush, of course. It's my first neutral-beige blush. At £21.50, it was by far...

Well, that's one thing I have no trouble providing. The beauty blogosphere has taken a turn for the introspective in recent months, with some of my favorite bloggers questioning how and why they write about makeup and beauty. Before I say anything else, I want to stress how lucky I feel to belong to such a thoughtful, intelligent online community. When I first started reading beauty blogs a few years ago, I was struck by how good a lot of them were: how well-written, funny, analytical, and just plain smart. I started my own blog because I wanted to contribute to the discussion, and maybe even entertain some of you as much as you'd entertained me. (Plus, none of my real-life friends are makeup geeks, and I didn't want to bore them discussing the minutiae of blush textures and lipstick finishes.) Four or five months on, I'm still in the honeymoon period of blogging. I get excited every time someone leaves a comment, and I can hardly believe that none of those comments ha...

I really shouldn't be writing this. I have three other posts in the works: my long-postponed review of Illamasqua Zygomatic blush, my even longer-postponed musings on British vs. American beauty practices, and a contribution to the wave of introspection that has been sweeping the beauty blogosphere in recent weeks. I was all set to write up one of those posts, but yesterday I went and bought a new lipstick, so here we are. When Revlon's Matte Balms first hit the shelves late last year, the only one of the ten shades that caught my eye was Sultry (reviewed here ), a deep roseberry. As a whole, the range was overwhelmingly orange, a color I like better in the abstract than on my face. There was your medium orange, your light orange, your red-orange, your orangey beige; even the fuchsia looked suspiciously tropical. So I enjoyed my Sultry for several months and virtuously ignored the others. But as spring wore on, it occurred to me that I had yet to find a pale orange lipstick. No...

Namely, two nail lacquers--Clique, a chartreuse creme (£5) and Brazil, a rainbow glitter topcoat (£6)--and the new Chameleon Glow in Wax + Wane (£8). Are ampersands no longer cool, Topshop? First up is the Chameleon Glow, which Topshop describes as an "[a]mazing dual pigmented, multi-use powder; can be used as an eyeshadow or a facial highlight." It's a translucent duochrome powder that's slightly rough to the touch. I saw two colors of this product on the shelf at Topshop: U-Turn was a peach/lime duochrome, while Wax + Wane has a brown-bronze base with fuchsia and electric blue overlay. I liked U-Turn as well, but it was less opaque than Wax + Wane. The Chameleon Glows are part of Topshop's summer Festival Collection , which also contains four pots of loose chunky glitter. Something tells me that 26-year-old literature grad students might not be the target demographic for this collection. Since I'm not a 12-year-old in 1999 (though I was!), I'm not inc...

I'm back in the land of decent coffee and 97% humidity! No, that figure isn't an exaggeration. The summer humidity in this part of the Mid-Atlantic is out of control. Early June isn't all that hot, but I can't spend five minutes outside without feeling moisture pool in my scalp and eyebrows and the space between my eyelids and eye sockets. Gross. In such conditions, there's no point in wearing powder eyeshadow; the most masterful blending and shading will melt and smudge into nothing. Best to rely on cream shadow or, better yet, eyeliner. Enter one of my purchases from England: Rimmel ScandalEyes Eyeshadow Stick in Blamed Blue, an iridescent teal. I picked it up on the same day I bought my Rimmel lip lacquer and Sleek blush ; Superdrug was having a 3-for-2 sale and I wanted to try some eye makeup in a color I'd never actually spend money on. The ScandalEyes line contained some neutral colors that I knew would be more versatile, but I couldn't pass up that be...

I can't believe how quickly these five weeks have passed, but today was my last full day in the UK. Though I still have several new products to review on the blog for my Beauty Abroad series, I thought I'd use this post for a brief roundup of all the makeup I've bought here. First, a bird's-eye view of my haul of shame: And an inventory--I've linked to the reviews I've already written, and starred the products I have yet to post about. Barry M Nail Lacquers in Sugar Apple and Shocking Pink ( reviews ); *Barry M Basecoat/Topcoat:  (I'm not planning to review the base/topcoat because such things either work or they don't, and this one works just fine. Takes a while to dry, but seems to protect my polish a bit more effectively than my usual Revlon Quick-Dry.)  *Illamasqua Cream Blusher in Zygomatic: Kiko Infinity Eyeshadows in 251 and 270; Long Lasting Stick Eyeshadow in 16 ( reviews ): Rimmel Apocalips Lip Lacquer in Across the Universe ( review ):   *Rimm...