Best Lipstick Formulas 2019

I just did some day drinking with a friend to celebrate our last day of teaching this semester, so it's fair to say that I won't be getting any work done this evening. But a single dark & stormy (yes, I'm a lightweight) hardly prevents me from blogging. I've done a lot of product reviews recently, so I thought I'd break up the monotony with a tag I found on the blog Chic Dabbling . Some beauty tags have weirdly farfetched questions ("what would you do if you woke up in the middle of the night and a thief was making off with your nail polish collection?"), but this one is refreshingly straightforward! Warning: it's a long questionnaire and I'm as wordy as ever. You might need your own dark & stormy to make it through this post. 1. Do you remember your first makeup item? I'm not entirely sure which makeup item was my very first, but it may have been the clear Revlon Moon Drops lipstick my grandma bought me when I was 12 or 13. It came in ...

Thanks to Liz for the tag! The person who came up with this meme clearly has a boundless capacity for suspension of disbelief, as well as a knack for writing questions that each provoke about five more questions. I've done my best. 1. You have to get rid of all of your foundations and only keep one high-end and one drugstore; which do you keep? I don't actually own any foundations, so I'm going to take the liberty of replacing "foundations" with "lipsticks," which makes the choice much harder for me. Am I allowed to buy back any of the shades I've gotten rid of, though? Or am I allowed only two for the rest of my life? I need more information. But assuming I'd eventually get to repurchase the ones I lost, I'd go with one neutral and one bold lipstick. These days I've been enjoying Milani Matte Naked, and I guess I'd choose NARS Angela for my high-end lipstick: it's my most expensive one, and I've used so little of it. 2. You...

I was tagged by the inimitable Bellyhead , whose makeup collection outclasses mine by several orders of magnitude. Here we go, nonetheless! 1. Which product do you still keep buying more of despite having plenty in your collection? Lipstick! I'm so, so bad about this. I have no trouble resisting blush or eyeshadow or even lip gloss, but lipstick exercises a special spell over me. In my defense, I rotate through my lipsticks pretty regularly and don't neglect many of them, but there's no denying that I have too many for one person with one mouth. I also have a tiny weakness for nail polishes... 2. What's the one product you can't live without? Concealer. I've been wearing it since my early teen years, when I didn't own any other makeup but lip balm. A good friend of mine once told me that she has a moral objection to concealer, because "it creates an unrealistic standard of perfection in the world." I have no moral objection to anything that anyon...

...but first, some whining about the weather. It's October, yet every morning is still oppressively humid. The sky has been choked with thick gray clouds for the past week. Today I woke up, showered, then realized that with the humidity at 90%, my hair would take hours to air-dry. I got out the blow-dryer, which I almost never do, and ended up looking like a Korean boy-band member, my hair simultaneously lank and feathered. Now for my makeup--but thanks to the film of moisture all over my face and neck, nothing would stick. Each product melted off before I'd finished putting the next one on. Finally I resigned myself to mascara and matte lipstick and headed out the door. After a fifteen-minute walk, every inch of my skin felt clammy. My hair was still wet. I tried to take off my blazer, but the cloth was clinging so closely to my bare forearms that the lining of one of the sleeves ripped loudly. To hell with this weather . Because of the persistent cloud cover, I haven't b...

I still haven't had a chance to take decent blog pictures in London, so here's a beauty meme, taken from the lovely Teresa at brush and bullet ! (I'm retaining the Commonwealth spelling because I'm in the Commonwealth as we speak. It's only fair.) ETA: I just realized that I forgot to copy and paste questions 17-30! I've been so distracted recently. Updated 9/13.  1. Is your hair naturally curly or straight? It's very wavy, but not quite curly. 2. What is your natural hair colour? Dark brown with a few auburn highlights. 3. Do you dye it yourself or go to a salon? I have virgin hair! 4. How often do you wash your hair? Every day. My hair is quite fine, and it looks limp and greasy if I go more than 36 hours without washing it. 5. Do you wear the same style every day or change it? At its current length, there's not much I can do with it except leave it down! When it was longer (about chin-length), I'd occasionally pin it into an awkward "bun...

Hello from South Florida! I took this photo yesterday evening, toward the end of a thunderstorm. It's hard to adhere to a regular blogging schedule when your location changes every few days, but I couldn't resist doing this meme from Liz at Beauty Reductionista . 1. Summer lipstick you're loving? I've been enjoying sheer and semi-sheer reds, both cool and warm. And on days when I just can't be bothered with color makeup, I reach for my favorite (and recently repurchased!) MLBB. Left to right: Maybelline Vibrant Mandarin, Revlon Lip Butter in Candy Apple, NARS Flamenco, and NARS Dolce Vita. Swatched in the same order: 2. Summer nail polish you're loving? All Essie, as it happens! For my fingers, Lollipop (cherry-red jelly) and Fashion Playground (mint green with faint silver shimmer); for my toes, In the Cab-ana (swimming-pool blue). 3. Summer blush you're loving? Illamasqua cream blush in Zygomatic (I'm sure you knew I'd say that). I can't remem...

From Sleep and Water , a wonderful Australian beauty blog I just discovered. I would love to see other people do this—seriously, I never get tired of hearing about lipstick. 1. How many lipsticks do you own? 49, plus five glosses. I plan to get rid of about ten lipsticks after I finish my chronology. 2. What was the first lipstick you owned? Revlon Certainly Red, but I returned it so quickly that I’m not sure it counts. The first lipstick I both owned and wore regularly was Revlon Carnation, from the now-discontinued Colorburst line. I’m a little embarrassed about this one, because it’s a shimmery bubblegum pink and I wore it to graduate classes at my stuffy university like it wasn’t even a thing. 3. What is your favourite lipstick brand? The brand with the biggest representation in my collection is Revlon (followed at a great distance by MAC), but I’d own a lot more NARS and YSL if my budget permitted. Really, though, I don’t have one favorite brand; I’m just a fuchsia and ...