Best Lipstick Formulas 2019

It will surprise none of my regular readers to learn that if I could wear only one category of makeup for the rest of my life, it would be lipstick. (I could probably use nude lipstick as undereye concealer, right?...right?) I wear lipstick every single day. I've tried almost every color category of lipstick. I created a lipstick taxonomy , for God's sake. But despite my passion for lipstick, a passion that has lasted the better part of a decade, I didn't use lip liner until fairly recently. The reason will sound a little neurotic, because it is: I wanted to experience each of my lipsticks in its "purest" form, without adulteration. If I bought a lipstick, it was because I loved that  particular mixture of pigments and respected the craftsmanship behind it. I didn't want anything to alter the delicate balance of warm and cool tones in NARS Mysterious Red or the subtle dustiness of Urban Decay Backtalk. But tastes change, and sometimes it takes me a while to fi...

Milani was perhaps the first drugstore brand to release a true matte liquid lipstick, back in the summer of 2015. I tried one of the original limited-edition shades — Crush , a dark brown —but hated it. The lipstick went on patchy, felt painfully dry within an hour, wore off in noticeable flakes, and had a strong root-beer-float smell. So when Milani made the Amore Matte Lip Crèmes permanent in 2016 and released dozens of new shades, including metallics, I didn't pay much attention. That changed last month, when I popped into a Rite Aid in Philadelphia to look for the Wet n Wild Liquid Catsuit lipsticks and came upon a display of new metallic Amore Mattes. And there was a metallic dark purple , you guys. And this was where common sense should have taken hold, to remind me that I'd been let down by the formula before and I didn't need another vampy lipstick I couldn't wear often. But I was preparing for an interview and had allotted all my reason to that, so I had nothin...

Well, we somehow got through January, even if we spent the last third of the month refreshing various news sites in growing horror. And now it's time for my first low-buy progress report of 2017! A reminder of the low-buy goals I've set for myself this year: No more than two makeup products per month, excluding replacements No new nail polish in the first half of the year And that's it for the consumption part of my beauty resolutions — the more I make, the more I'll forget, right? So let's see how well I did in January: New Makeup: L-R: The Ultimatte, Nudist Peach, Missy and Fierce. Milani Amore Matte Metallic Lip Creme in 15 The Ultimatte: $8 Wet n Wild Liquid Catsuit Lipsticks in Nudist Peach and Missy and Fierce: $5 each Total: $18 New Skincare: Skinfood Super Nut mask, My Beauty Diary Damask Rose mask, and Tosowoong Propolis mask (already used): $7ish total Etude House My Beauty Tool blotting papers: $4 Samples: COSRX Ultimate Nourishing Rice Mask and Snail Mu...

"A Journey Through Purge-atory" is my ongoing, if not exactly regular, destashing series; here are my first and second posts. Today, let's get rid of some lipstick and polish! Lipsticks, left to right: YSL Glossy Stain in Rouge Gouache, Revlon Super Lustrous Lipstick in Mauvy Night, Revlon Colorstay Ultimate Suede Lipstick in Supermodel, Maybelline Colorsensational Vivids in On Fire Red, Milani Amore Matte Lip Creme in Crush. YSL Rouge Gouache is three years old now, and the formula seems a little off: it's thicker than it used to be and it doesn't quite set on my lips. We had some good times together, Rouge Gouache, but I didn't wear you enough while you were still in decent condition, because it turns out that I like opaque glosses only in theory. Revlon Mauvy Night is one of my oldest lipsticks: I bought it in the summer of 2011 after seeing Midnight in Paris and falling in love with Marion Cotillard's dusky lip color. I did not, however, fall in lo...

Prior to this year, I felt ambivalent about Milani. It was the only cruelty-free brand with a decent selection in my local CVS (no NYX or Wet n Wild for this backwater), but its offerings included malodorous, drying lipstick , sticky lip gloss , liquid lipstick that refused to set, coarsely milled eyeshadow , and too-shimmery baked blush. 2015 has changed all that. I don't know what changes took place behind the scenes at Milani HQ, but my purchases in the past year have turned me into, if not an ardent fangirl, at least someone who appreciates the brand's presence in the beauty aisle. Matte Naked lipstick and Coral Cove blush are two of my favorite beauty buys of 2015, and Milani's clear eyebrow gel has become a daily staple despite its too-large applicator. The matte liquid lipstick I reviewed a few weeks ago was a letdown, but I'd recommend it for anyone who likes that sort of thing; it just turns out that I don't. So I had high hopes for my latest Milani pur...

If you distilled all of 2015's lip-color trends into a single product, you'd come up with Milani Amore Matte Lip Creme in Crush. Crush ticks all the boxes: it's a dark brown (check) liquid lipstick (check) that dries to a flat matte finish (check). Interestingly, it's also a marriage of high-end and low-end trends. Matte liquid lipsticks have been everywhere in the last couple of years, but the brands popularizing them have been largely indie or drugstore brands: NYX, Lime Crime, ColourPop, Kat Von D, Jeffree Star, LA Splash, and now Milani. Kat Von D is the obvious outlier in that list — her Everlasting Liquid Lipsticks go for $19 at Sephora — but as befits a former tattoo artist, she pays more attention to street style and Instagram than to runways. The trend is trickling upward, though: MAC is releasing its own line of Retro Matte Liquid Lipsticks this fall, and who knows what other brands will launch their boats on the liquid matte river? I'm not sure how I feel...