Best Lipstick Formulas 2019

After my little spending spree in the UK last month, I decided to go on a replacement-only makeup/polish no-buy for the month of July. I'm happy to report that I didn't need any makeup or polish replacements and had no trouble avoiding new purchases. I don't know why, but it's much easier for me to stick to a no-buy than to a low-buy. If I restrict myself to two new items per month, I'll inevitably end up with three or four. But if I restrict myself to zero items per month, I'll buy zero. Granted, I don't have a huge breadth of experience here — I've never tried to maintain a no-buy longer than two months — but in general, moderation is not my (black-and-white-striped) bag. Anyway, here's the damage for July: New Makeup/Polish: none, bitches! Gifts:  My mom picked up an e.l.f. lip stain in Nude Nectar at some point in the last several months. She can't remember when or why she bought it, but she has never used it and conjectures that "I pr...

This is, what, the third purple lip color I've reviewed in the last month? Oh, well. I don't think it's possible to be a lipstick-loving k-pop fan without developing a curiosity about Korean lip tints. I'd had my eye out for a tint since last year, but most of the tints available in the US seemed to come in very bright colors (orange and pink being the most popular) and watery, ultra-staining formulas that I knew would dry the hell out of my lips. By the time I visited oo35mm , a deceptively tiny store in New York's Chinatown with an impressive selection of Asian (mostly Korean and Japanese) beauty products, I'd pretty much given up on finding a relatively non-drying lip tint in my preferred purply color family. I was actually at oo35mm for skincare: I wanted a Salux exfoliating body washcloth, which I'd read about in this Into the Gloss post (see, I do like ITG sometimes), as well as some sheet masks from brands I hadn't yet tried. But when I saw the T...

What were the odds that I'd review two lipsticks named "Crush" in three days? Pretty good, actually, since drugstore beauty brands love to name their lip products "Crush." There doesn't seem to be any color theme linking them together, either. Milani's Amore Matte Lip Creme in Crush is dark brown; Maybelline's Coral Crush lipstick is, well, coral; Rimmel's Crush lipstick is a peachy nude; and my most recent beauty purchase, Revlon's ColorBurst Balm Stain in Crush, is a vivid magenta plum. I swear each brand has a hat full of names evoking positive and vaguely romantic/sexual emotions —"crush," "flirt," "kiss," "embrace," "tease" —and a bored-to-hell intern assigns each new product one of those names at random, then goes back to posting on Kik or whatever the kiddos use in 2015. We're a long way from NARS' Goodbye Emmanuelle lipstick . Whatever induced me to buy this particular Crush l...

I was planning to wait until spring to buy these two bright pinks, but I had a $7-off-$17 coupon for Revlon burning a hole in my wallet, and there were no other Revlon products I really wanted. So here we are: my first Moisture Stain, Barcelona Nights, and my sixth Lip Butter, Lollipop. (Seventh, if you count the tube of Pink Truffle I lost earlier this year and had to replace.) Because I'm a past master at justifying lipstick purchases, I concluded that Barcelona Nights and Lollipop would help me escape my seasonal rut of brick-plum-wine. We'll see if that happens. I'm wearing Revlon's Matte Balm in Sultry as I type this, so maybe not. The latest drugstore answer to YSL's Glossy Stains, Revlon's Moisture Stains came out this past spring. I held off on trying them for a few reasons, the first one entirely irrational: I find the phrase "moisture stain" disgusting. "Oh, that's a pretty color on your lips. What is it?" "Thanks, it's...