Best Lipstick Formulas 2019

During my trip to LA in August, my chronic absent-mindedness struck again: I managed to lose my tube of NARS Dolce Vita, my trusty "purse lipstick." Despite my usual preference for bold matte or semi-matte lipsticks, I like having a sheer MLBB on me at all times, in case I don't have a chance to reapply MAC Antique Velvet after lunch or whatever. I waited a couple of months to see if Dolce Vita would turn up, but when it became clear that it was gone for good, I ran into another problem: I couldn't exactly afford to replace a $28 lipstick. Damn it. I've discussed why I don't usually bother hunting for dupes, but this was one of the few situations in which it seemed justified. I didn't really care whether my new sheer MLBB was identical to Dolce Vita; I just wanted a flattering, comfortable neutral shade that I could apply in a few seconds. I recalled that Revlon, after discontinuing all of its lip butters, had released a few of the more popular lip butte...

...instead of, you know, her opponent's total disdain for the democratic process. The third (and, blessedly, last) presidential debate of 2016 took place last night at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. I'm not going to discuss the content of the debate because 1) it's pretty obvious which candidate I support and 2) this is a beauty blog, not a political blog. But the personal is political, as feminists of the '90s were fond of reminding us, and sometimes makeup is political too. Donald Trump's bizarre orange bronzer has been discussed ad nauseam, but Hillary Clinton's makeup made relatively little impression on the public until last night , when she took the stage wearing a space-age white pantsuit and a bold berry-red lipstick: I was watching the New York Times livestream until it froze halfway through the debate. Get it together, guys. This struck me as a marked departure from her makeup in the first two debates. But when I went back and looked at her prev...

Lipstick Queen is a brand that confuses the hell out of me. When I first heard of it, about five years ago, I got the sense that it specialized in high-quality, beautifully packaged, somewhat overpriced renditions of traditional lipstick shades. Despite reading favorable reviews online, I found the shade range uninspiring and the price point too high, and I wrote the brand off as Not My Thing. In the next few years, the Lipstick Queen founder created a couple of lines for other brands: I remember a "Poppy King for J. Crew" red-orange lipstick and Kate Spade's Supercalifragilipstick! collection, both now discontinued. Lipstick Queen itself didn't come to my attention again until 2014 or 2015, when I started hearing about the brand's new lipsticks: four "Butterfly Ball" shades with faint blue shimmer; a sheer green "Frog Prince" lipstick that turned pink on the lips; whatever the fuck "Liptropolis" was supposed to be; and a set of fi...

Hey there! Just a quick review to prove to you that I haven't quit blogging, and to prove to myself that there's more to life than watching American democracy go down the toilet while I revise my dissertation abstract for the dozenth time. Today we'll look at a product I've been using and enjoying for almost three months: Kiko Long Lasting Stick Eyeshadow in 36 Golden Mauve. I bought Golden Mauve back in June at the new Kiko store in Birmingham, along with two powder eyeshadows that I have yet to wear. The stick eyeshadows were all on sale, so I assumed they were being discontinued, but they're still on Kiko's website at their original price of £6.90. I certainly hope they're here to stay, because they're fantastic products that have received almost universally positive reviews. One of the less-than-positive reviews is mine, actually: the first Kiko stick eyeshadow I tried was 16 Purple (pardon the ultra-LQ photos in that post), a shimmery dark purple ...

Three-quarters of 2016 is gone, you guys! What happened? Well, at least one thing happened: I bought some makeup. And I spent the weekend on postdoc applications, so I didn't get around to this post until now. Here we go: New Makeup/Polish: Essie Playing Koi: $9 NYX Matte Lipstick in Up the Bass: $6 Urban Decay Vice Lipstick in Backtalk: $17 Total: $32 I bought all of these in the first few days of the month and worried that I might not be able to go the rest of September with no new makeup. But I held off, and I'm proud that I did, especially because this was such a stressful month and I was so tempted to impulse-buy stuff (more on that later). I confess that I did visit my local Rite-Aid more than once in search of the Wet n Wild fall collection; I would have bought the Plaid to the Bone trio had I found it, but the collection never materialized. I'm pretty happy with everything I did get this month, especially Backtalk. Up the Bass and Playing Koi are both a bit patchy,...