Best Lipstick Formulas 2019

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 ...

When ColourPop released a line of 15 highlighters early last month, I didn't take much notice. I'd never used a highlighter before, and since this hot, humid weather gives me a perpetual...let's call it "glow," I didn't think I needed any extra radiance. If anything, I needed the opposite. But curiosity and the usual flood of gushing ColourPop reviews prevailed, and I eventually decided to pick up a couple of highlighters. The highlighters are $8 each, and I decided to order two. Narrowing down the selection was difficult, since some of them differed only minutely from others. I had a few requirements, though. Above all, I wanted to avoid any highlighters with big glitter chunks, which several of the ColourPop highlighters seemed to have. My desired effect was more along these lines... Source ...than these: Source I also shied away from the highlighters that seemed too dark or orange for my skintone and the ones that looked more like pearlescent blushes (thou...

In the last couple of weeks, I've been a bad early modernist: I've watched the BBC miniseries of Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall without first reading the books. I did start reading Wolf Hall two years ago, but I just couldn't get into it, despite my childhood obsession with Tudor history. There's something about grad school that makes one averse to novels set in the time period one studies. (My own research interests lie in Stuart, not Tudor, England, but the early 16th century is close enough.) However, I didn't have any trouble getting absorbed in the BBC version, not least because of its aesthetic richness. The indoor scenes are filmed in deep shadow to evoke an era before electricity. The costumes and hairstyles make me feel like I'm watching Holbein portraits come to life (indeed, Holbein makes a cameo in the fourth episode). And while the makeup is historically accurate, i.e. barely there, I can still find beauty inspiration in the colors that the charact...

It's Christmas in August! By which I mean, it's been so gray and gloomy in San Francisco that wearing gold eyeliner and brick-red matte lipstick-- together , even--seems perfectly appropriate in early August. These are both recent purchases: I bought the eyeliner at a CVS in New York and the lipstick at an Ulta in Birmingham . I get around. NYX Slide On Pencil in Glitzy Gold is a yellow-gold metallic pencil eyeliner that needs to be sharpened (in my case, with a NARS dual sharpener that I forgot to bring to San Francisco, of course).  The Slide On formula was already familiar to me: I reviewed Jewel, a reddish purple with pink sparkles, here . Like Jewel, Glitzy Gold is soft, yielding, and easy to apply and blend, but it's not perfect. It draws a very fine, surprisingly subtle line. When it comes to eyeliner, I like subtle, but Glitzy Gold verges on easy-to-ignore subtle. It goes on about 90% opaque, but I like to wait 30 seconds for it to set and then go over it again, wh...

I’ve been waffling for weeks over whether to buy NARS Kauai, a new eyeshadow duo for Spring 2014. Because of my devotion to intense lip colors, I’m very much a neutral-eye person, but the pale gold and deep purple of Kauai are beckoning me out of my comfort zone. The formula is smooth and buttery and perfect, and the finish transforms from a subtle sheen under natural light (above) to sparklemania in artificial light. But it’s $35! I don’t know! I also don’t know for sure whether it’s limited edition: Temptalia says it’s not, which is reassuring, but other bloggers say it is. Ugh, decisions. Stray notes: 1) I really need to stop swatching over that cluster of freckles on my right hand; 2) the apparent unevenness of the purple is due to said hasty swatching, not to a fault in the formula.