Best Lipstick Formulas 2019

(Apologies to a show I've never actually watched. I'm told that I should!) I've noted before that the average British woman seems to get more excited about makeup than the average American woman does. I stand by my original conclusion: "In my experience, Americans pay more attention to the overall effect of their makeup, while the British pay more attention to individual details." Drugstores in the UK offer more shade variety per brand, and it's not unusual to see people wearing red or fuchsia lipstick when out and about.  Experimenting with makeup is part of British culture in a way it's just not in the US; there's a sense of play here that I find so refreshing. I took this photo (faces blurred for privacy) at the MAC lipstick display at the Selfridges in Birmingham two weeks ago: I lingered in the Selfridges makeup department for about 15 minutes, and the MAC section was like this the entire time. I'd occasionally try to approach and swatch ...

Back in November , I decided to participate in Project Make-a-Dent, the creation of Helen at Lola's Secret Beauty Blog . Quite a few people on my blogroll have joined in this project, which aims to curb excessive consumption by forcing us to pay attention to the products we already own. The idea is to choose a handful of makeup or skincare products we've been neglecting, then either use them up or "make a dent" in them. Since I have more lipsticks than any other kind of makeup, I chose seven that struck me as suitable for fall and winter. Here's the photo I took originally: Left to right: Rimmel Apocalips Lip Lacquer in Across the Universe, Revlon Plum Velour, NYX Perfect, Revlon Matte Balm in Sultry, Revlon Fire and Ice, Revlon Cherries in the Snow, and YSL Glossy Stain in Rouge Gouache. Now that two and a half months have passed, it's high time I updated you on my progress--except that I haven't made much progress at all. Instead, I've achieved som...

Well, I guess that was an eight-day hiatus! It crept up on me, as such things do. First the weather was gloomy for days on end, so I couldn't take decent photos. Then I took an overnight trip to visit a friend in another city. Then I spent a couple of days in DC for research, which was very pleasant until Wednesday afternoon, when I tripped over a curb in Capitol Hill, face-planted on the sidewalk, slammed my knee against the concrete, shattered my phone screen, and started sobbing, mostly from embarrassment. Now I'm back home, nursing my various bruises and preparing to leave for winter break tomorrow. In addition to the physical clouds that have interfered with my photography, I've had a cloud of writer's block hanging over me for at least a month now. The writer's block is mostly academic, but it's also cast a shadow over my beauty blogging. In both cases, it's not so much that I don't know what to write; in fact, I have all too many ideas. The probl...

We makeup fiends are a fickle bunch, hailing a product as a holy grail one week and forgetting about it the next. I slip in and out of lipstick infatuations as regularly as I once slipped in and out of professor crushes, but at least professor crushes are free. Lipstick is not, and right now, my friends, I'm pretty broke. I haven't bought a lipstick in a month, and I want to maintain that discipline until the end of the year. What better time to shine a spotlight on some of the lip colors I've neglected recently? I own at least sixty, but I end up playing favorites each season. To break my recent patterns, I've decided to take part in Project Make-a-Dent , the brainchild of Helen at Lola's Secret Beauty Blog . The rules are simple: commit to using a handful of products more often, then do so. The goal is to either use up or make a dent in beauty products that have slipped out of your field of view. For my version of Make-a-Dent, I focused on lipsticks, since I have ...