Best Lipstick Formulas 2019

My boyfriend recently left his job in the UK, which is great news relationship-wise: we met in my former graduate program and have been long-distance since I transferred to my current school seven (!) years ago, and now we'll actually be able to live together for more than a couple months at a time. On a shallower level, however, this will be my last transatlantic makeup review for a while. Before my boyfriend returned to the US earlier this month, I sent him to the Kiko store in the Birmingham train station, where he very kindly swatched a few shades of the Velvet Passion matte lipstick line. (Weirdly, there's another Kiko store five minutes away, in the enormous mall attached to the station.) Here's the full display of the lipsticks, which launched last year. Each one retails for  £ 7 (about $9). The shade I chose was 319 (Chocolate), a medium plummy brown that feels very Jazz-Age-casual to me. The Velvet Passion lipstick bullets have an odd squared-off tip that resemble...

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...

NYX expanded its matte lipstick line at the beginning of this year, adding some trendier colors to its extensive but mundane collection of reds, pinks, and nudes. The new shade that immediately caught my eye was Up the Bass, a medium purple with a large dose of gray. Because we were heading into spring at that point, I decided to wait and see if I still wanted it in the fall. It turned out that I did (of course I did: it's a purple lipstick), so I picked it up at Ulta last week. Like other '90s lip colors, this shade of grayish lavender is having a moment right now. I believe its first 2010s iteration was the NARS Audacious lipstick in Dominique, but other brands have since produced variations on the theme. True gray lipsticks are also becoming more popular (MAC Halsey comes to mind), and as someone with cool grayish undertones, I couldn't be happier. Up the Bass is poised exactly midway between gray and purple, making it a flattering color for me, but I have a feeling that...

I own between 55 and 60 lipsticks, more than a few of them purple. It's rare that a mainstream brand releases a lipstick unlike any I own, and even rarer that a mainstream brand releases a purple unlike any I own (yes, I'm using a lipstick junkie's definition of "unlike," but still). So when Bite Beauty announced that it was expanding its newish Amuse Bouche line with six new shades, one of them a luminous blue-toned lavender that looked like no purple lipstick I'd seen before, I took notice. Bite's "Sweet and Savory" collection for Summer 2016 comprises three dark "savory" shades ( Kale, a blackened green; Squid Ink, a navy blue; and Whiskey, a deep brown similar to MAC Antique Velvet ) and three purply "sweet" shades (Taro, a dark grayish purple; Thistle, a lilac-taupe in the ColourPop Trap family; and Lavender Jam, an "electric blue-violet"). So far as I know, all of them are permanent except the two purples, Ta...

The NYX Liquid Suede lipsticks didn't spark my interest when they first came out last year. So many NYX products have disappointed me that I tend to approach the brand with skepticism, and the Liquid Suede line seemed like a hasty attempt to capitalize on the liquid-matte trend of 2015. And since NYX had been making matte liquid lipsticks for years (the Soft Matte Lip Creams, which I'd never bothered trying), it was unclear what niche NYX wanted the Liquid Suedes to fill. The NYX website touted their "soft matte finish," but blog reviews described them as not quite matte, and indeed their full name was "Liquid Suede Cream Lipstick." The shade range was small and divided awkwardly between brownish neutrals and weird NSFW shades like greenish gray and fluorescent lavender. And shortly after the Liquid Suedes were released, NYX followed up with a zillion new shades of matte lipsticks and Soft Matte Lip Creams, plus a "Lip Lingerie" line composed enti...

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...