Best Lipstick Formulas 2019

It feels like I've been waiting forever to post these reviews. When Ulta had a 40%-off sale on NYX and Revlon two weeks ago, I seized the chance to order a few things I'd been wanting for a while. (I came in $.77 over the $25 free-shipping minimum, which made me inordinately proud.) My order arrived this past Tuesday, but I forced myself not to open the package until I'd submitted an article I'd been refusing to let go. I did that on Wednesday, but the next four days were cloudy and rainy, which meant that I had almost no natural light by which to photograph my new goodies. Long story short: the weather, my schedule, and my neuroses didn't line up until today. So today I present, from left to right: Revlon Lip Butter in Red Velvet, NYX Slide-On Eye Pencil in Golden Bronze, NYX Jumbo Pencil in Iced Mocha, Revlon Lacquer Balm in Coy, NYX Round Lipstick in Castle, Revlon Colorburst Lip Gloss in Embellished. Warning: embarrassment of photos ahead. Revlon Lip Butter in...

Today, as a reward for finishing an article draft and setting up a meeting with my adviser, I headed to the local Bluemercury to check out the new NARS Audacious lipsticks. I limited myself to seven swatches (as many as would fit on my hand), since I'm not audacious enough to swatch a collection of 30 lipsticks all over my upper body. These were the seven that caught my eye when I first looked at the display. The testers had been very lightly used, and many of them were still pristine. Is there anything more satisfying than being the first to use a lipstick tester? Probably, but let me keep my low bar for satisfaction, at least for now. I'm a grad student. Our pleasures are few. Outside, in shade. Left to right: Liv, Audrey, Grace, Vera, Annabella, and (barely visible) Fanny and Bette. Liv is a deep reddish purple; Audrey is a rich plummy red; Grace is a hot pink coral, similar to MAC Impassioned; Vera is a reddish raspberry, similar to Revlon Cherries in the Snow; Annabella is...

Name: Maybelline Color Statement Lipstick in Ruby Star Date Purchased: February 2013 Grade: B Notes: Ruby Star was a gift from my mom, who included it in her annual Valentine's package (aww). She thought she was sending me an unremarkable berry-red lipstick, not a berry-red lipstick with a raging case of disco fever. How wrong she was. Ruby Star's distinguishing feature is an obscene abundance of gold and blue glitter. As I'm sure I've mentioned before, I'm averse to shimmer and glitter in lipsticks, so I would never have bought this for myself. But the universe placed it in my path, and as it turns out, disco fever is highly contagious. Had I glanced at Ruby Star under drugstore lighting, I would have muttered the F-word--frost--and moved on. But having seen it in direct sunlight, I'm reluctant to call it a frost lipstick; I think of frost as white or silver, with smaller, finer particles. Though Ruby Star's base color is cool-toned, the gold glitter warms ...

“His life was a constant war with insensate objects that fell apart, or attacked him, or refused to function, or viciously got themselves lost as soon as they entered the sphere of his existence.” This is Vladimir Nabokov's description of Professor Timofey Pnin, the hapless protagonist of Pnin (1957), but it is also a perfect description of me. I am very, very absent-minded. If I'm asked to do two things at once, my brain will simply refuse to focus on one of those tasks, which means that any object involved in that task runs the risk of getting lost. Sometimes that object is a lipstick. And the more I use any given lipstick, the greater the chance that I will leave it at a coffee shop or in a library bathroom. Which explains why I found myself at CVS two days ago, repurchasing two of my favorite neutral lipsticks, both by Revlon: a Lip Butter in Pink Truffle and a Colorburst Matte Balm in Sultry. I'd had Pink Truffle for nearly a year and had used up most of it before i...