Best Lipstick Formulas 2019

In the past five years or so, I've owned at least one dark lipstick in almost every color family: red, purple, pink, plum, brown, even blue and gray. Until this year, though, I had never bought a true black lipstick. Black lips were a little too predictably goth, too Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way . A dark brown or dark red was arty, my hipster brain told me. It was historical, because I could point to the same colors in illustrations from the '20s. Dark shades of traditional lipstick colors made me feel more mature: that is, as mature as an overeducated, underemployed, indebted millennial could feel. By contrast, black lipstick evoked nothing so much as a My Chemical Romance concert in 2006. But my prejudices vanished one late-September Sunday in the beauty section of Target, when I came upon Wet n Wild's Halloween collection and spotted a sparkly black liquid lipstick . I had resisted non-sparkly black lipsticks by dozens of brands, but I was powerless against b...

(Part 1 here .) Coral was the  trendy lipstick color when I first got into makeup around 2012, and I must have imprinted on that cultural moment, because I've been searching for a flattering coral lipstick ever since. So far, I've had the most luck with muted, brownish corals like Maybelline Naked Coral , which I bought almost exactly a year ago. But sometimes I want to wear one of those bright, juicy pinky-red corals, something like Marc Jacobs So Sofia , which I bought almost exactly two  years ago and returned soon thereafter. My heart and soul belong to vampy lip colors, but there are days when I crave the vivid retro pop that only coral-pink can deliver. So my search continues. So Sofia wasn't my best color, but it was a beautiful color, and I probably would have kept it if it hadn't cost me $30. So when I noticed that one of the $7 Lux Lipsticks in ColourPop's spring collection was almost identical to So Sofia, I pounced. Despite my mixed (generally bad) luck ...

Glossier keeps coming up with new marketing strategies to put me off and new products to tempt me back in. No sooner had I planned a post on Glossier's MLM-esque rep program than they released a fucking birthday-cake-scented lip balm with sparkles and holographic packaging. I have a price, and Glossier knows it. So this post will be a two-parter: a review of Birthday Balm Dotcom, followed by one of my usual rants against the marriage of social media and late capitalism. Who says we can't have our cake and eat it too? *** PART 1: THE REVIEW *** Birthday is Glossier's collaboration with Milk Bar , the dessert arm of the Momofuku restaurant empire. The pairing makes a lot of sense: like Glossier, Milk Bar sells overpriced, overhyped products in small portions, but damned if its aesthetic isn't on point. Here's the "Cereal Milk" soft-serve I had last October in Williamsburg; it was tasty, but who wants soft-serve without a cone? Give me Mister Softee any day...

In addition to the Ultra Matte Lip in Trap , I bought three potted products from ColourPop last month. After a few weeks of playing with them, I'm excited to finally write a review! I'll start with an overview of each item, then post a few looks I've put together. Clockwise from left: Super Shock Cheek in Rain ($8) and Super Shock Shadows in Shop and Eye Candy ($5 each). L-R, one finger-swipe per swatch: Eye Candy, Shop, Rain.   When I ordered Eye Candy , an "ethereal lavender drizzled with tons of pink and silver glitter," I knew from experience exactly what I would get: an unabashed glitterbomb.  Eye Candy's base color looks like a sheer dusty pink in the pan and in arm swatches, but it pulls more lavender on my lids. That sheer base is crammed, not drizzled, with fine pink glitter and chunkier silver glitter. You really have to squint to see the pink glitter, and only the silver comes through when the shadow is worn. Eye Candy has the same bouncy, moussey t...