Best Lipstick Formulas 2019

In general, I don't trust beauty brands, religious sects, or political movements with extremely charismatic figureheads. The kind of person who attracts fanatical devotees tends to be the kind of person who wants fanatical devotees, who lives for adulation and drama , who needs to be the center of attention at all times — a narcissist, in other words. Once you've known one narcissist you've known them all, and you become wary of anyone who displays the symptoms of narcissism, whether it's Donald Trump, Jeffree Star, or that professor who gave a talk in my department last week and unbuttoned his shirt a few inches too far. Kat Von D is another charismatic figurehead who has always set off my narcissist detector. I've been hearing great things about her makeup for years, but I've also been hearing terrible things about her for years. (I don't feel like rehashing all her controversies here, though they're easy enough to find if you're interested.) Wha...

I'm told that it's May, though you wouldn't know it from the weather, which has been utterly miserable for over a week and promises to carry on being utterly miserable for another week to come. Every day is the same: between 45 and 60 degrees, completely overcast, raining on and off, humidity around 90%. After one glorious week in mid-April, I thought I could settle into the certainty of not having to wear pants again until my UK visit in June. Then nature said "lol j/k" and I found myself fumbling in my closet for my down coat and pulling MAC Eugenie out of retirement. (I really have been loving Eugenie recently, as a complement to my leather jacket and end-of-semester scowl.) But the calendar proceeds apace even if the weather doesn't, and it's time again for my monthly roundup of beauty purchases! New Makeup/Polish: NYX Liquid Suede in Amethyst : $5.50 (with CVS coupon) Formula X Lively : $11 Too Cool for School Milk Tint in Milky Lavender: $8 Glossier...

Yellow is an underrepresented color in most people's makeup collections, including mine. Deservedly or not, it has a dismal reputation: The Googlers have spoken: yellow is the most "visible" and "noticeable" color, but like many highly visible and noticeable things, including the Kardashian-Jenner clan, Lime Crime, and Donald Trump, it is also perceived as "annoying" and "depressing." (Actually, the most visible color to the human eye is yellow-green, due to its location in the middle of the color spectrum, but let's not be too picky.) Yellow is notorious for being unflattering to most complexions, and it's the rare eyeshadow palette that includes even an understated mustard, let alone a chartreuse or daffodil. So imagine my surprise when I started noticing yellow nail polish in what seemed like every other k-pop girl-group video released this spring. Here's some proof, arranged chronologically by release date: Mamamoo, "You...

Until recently, teal was one of my least favorite colors. It unsettled me in the same way that fuchsia used to: both are amphibious, ill-defined colors. But one swipe of fuchsia lipstick in the summer of 2011 banished my unease forever, and I've just experienced a similar conversion to teal. It started when I looked at swatch photos of Essie's Spring 2015 collection and found myself drawn to Garden Variety, a bright, blue-leaning teal creme. I almost bought it, but I decided to look for a cruelty-free version instead, despite my usual aversion to dupe-hunting . Serendipity, in the form of Teresa's Instagram , put Sephora Formula X Enigma on my radar, and I bought it during a brief trip to New York last weekend. As a bonus, it matched the dress I was wearing that day: (FYI, though Sephora claims that the Formula X brand is cruelty-free, it does appear to be sold in China. Whether or not that destroys its cruelty-free status depends on your personal stance on the issue.) I ...