Best Lipstick Formulas 2019

Greetings from San Francisco, where I've spent the past few days recovering from jetlag and dissertating at neighborhood coffee shops. With three days of the old year remaining, it's time to post a list I've been compiling for the past month or so: my 14 favorite beauty purchases of 2014! A few notes before we begin: These are new-to-me products (not repurchases) that I bought in 2014. Only three of them actually came out this year; the others belong to their brands' permanent collections. I don't chase the limited-edition rabbit unless his pocket watch is especially shiny. And I find that when I buy makeup because it's new, I'm more often disappointed than not. These are not necessarily the best-performing beauty products I bought this year; they're just the ones that I've enjoyed the most. Of course, nothing truly bad made this list, but some of the products listed below have minor flaws, and there are some technically flawless products I bought i...

Name: NARS Velvet Matte Lip Pencil in Mysterious Red Date Purchased: November 2013 Grade: A Notes: How excited am I to write this post? So excited that I broke my (never very strict, let's be honest) Lipstick Chronology rule in order to review Mysterious Red out of order. It's the holiday season, after all: what better time to feature my staple red lipstick, the one I can trust to flatter me whenever I wear it? Mysterious Red was released as part of the NARS fall 2013 collection. Assuming that it was limited edition, I used it sparingly for an entire year, mourning the transience of earthly things every time I sharpened it. But on my birthday this November, while browsing the NARS display at Sephora, I noticed that Mysterious Red had been made permanent! It felt like an especially nice birthday present from NARS to me. Plus, now I can review it without apologizing for praising an unavailable lipstick. A year ago, I realized that I'd never found the perfect matte red lipstic...

Well, I guess that was an eight-day hiatus! It crept up on me, as such things do. First the weather was gloomy for days on end, so I couldn't take decent photos. Then I took an overnight trip to visit a friend in another city. Then I spent a couple of days in DC for research, which was very pleasant until Wednesday afternoon, when I tripped over a curb in Capitol Hill, face-planted on the sidewalk, slammed my knee against the concrete, shattered my phone screen, and started sobbing, mostly from embarrassment. Now I'm back home, nursing my various bruises and preparing to leave for winter break tomorrow. In addition to the physical clouds that have interfered with my photography, I've had a cloud of writer's block hanging over me for at least a month now. The writer's block is mostly academic, but it's also cast a shadow over my beauty blogging. In both cases, it's not so much that I don't know what to write; in fact, I have all too many ideas. The probl...

Name: Milani Color Statement Lipstick in Sangria Date Purchased: August 2013 Grade: C+ Notes: In my experience, sangria is almost always a mistake. I can't stomach the taste unless I'm tipsy to begin with, which means that when I find myself drinking it, it's already too late to escape a hangover. The first time I tried sangria was at a tapas restaurant on Little Clarendon Street in Oxford. A guy spent the entire evening hitting on me in front of his girlfriend, presumably to make her jealous. I guess it worked, or didn't work, because they're still together nearly seven years later. Men are the worst. So is sangria, but you don't see anyone using the hashtag #notallsangria. Buying Milani Sangria, a bright matte plum, was only slightly less of a mistake than drinking its namesake. I'd already tried two other Color Statement lipsticks, Flamingo Pose and Sweet Nectar , and had found them both drying. But I wanted a dark matte lipstick for fall, and I reasoned ...