Best Lipstick Formulas 2019

I am not a serial depotter of beauty products. I admire people with a more utilitarian approach to makeup, people for whom packaging means little to nothing. But I'm not one of those people, and I probably never will be. I don't insist on the fanciest, most elaborate compacts and tubes: MAC lipsticks are some of my favorites, design-wise. But I'd rather leave an eyeshadow in its original case, even at the expense of precious shelf space, than depot it into a magnetic palette. There's just too much risk involved in prying makeup out of its exoskeleton, and the end result is often depressingly ugly. That said, there are times when I find depotting necessary. If a product's packaging is damaged to the point that it endangers either the makeup or me, I'd rather depot it than leave it in an unusable shell. When the mirror on my theBalm Nude 'Tude palette developed a huge crack, I reflected that it was probably  a bad idea to have broken glass near a product I pu...

One of the less charming aspects of being an American millennial in 2017 is getting called a "special snowflake" by old bigots on the internet. From my occasional perusal of right-wing Twitter accounts (I discovered last year that my mild-mannered undergrad Shakespeare professor is an alt-right conspiracy theorist, and I'm still not over it), I gather that special-snowflakery consists of wanting a living wage, universal healthcare, Nazi-free public discourse, and a modest decrease in mass shootings. In that spirit, I nominate Topshop Glow Stick in Otherworldly as the official highlighter of millennial special snowflakes, not only because of its color (white as the driven, pre-dog-pee snow) but also because it's as jankily constructed as our government these days. And because Topshop is a British brand and Brexit was the first event that made me wonder if Trump really could become president (though I do think that's a false equivalence in many ways). And because m...

Happy Easter! Full disclosure: I'm one of those secular assholes who welcome the Easter season not for its religious significance but for the positively pagan abundance of egg-shaped chocolate. Growing up half-Jewish, I couldn't help noticing the difference in quality between Easter candy and kosher-for-Passover candy, which consisted (and still consists) primarily of coconut-covered marshmallows and those sinister  jelly fruit slices . The marshmallows weren't bad, but they couldn't hold a candle to malted-milk eggs and Cadbury's Creme Eggs and Reese's Eggs. Come to think of it, have I ever encountered an egg-shaped candy I didn't like? There must be some deep primal significance to ovoid treats. All this is to say that I really enjoy the symbolism of Easter, to say nothing of its color scheme. Most pastels pull out the gray undertones in my skin and make me look slightly zombified, but I still give them an ill-deserved chance every March and April. This p...

I'm back with some makeup and some thoughts! New Makeup: L-R: Whirl, Metal Head, Men Love Mystery, Puff, Otherworldly. Swatches, same order. Glossier Cloud Paint in Puff : $14.40 (20% off) MAC Matte Lipstick in Men Love Mystery: $15 (15% off, plus tax) MAC Metallic Lipstick in Metal Head: purchased with Nordstrom store credit (usually $18) MAC Matte Lipstick in Whirl (mini): gift from Renee Topshop Glow Stick in Otherworldly: gift from my boyfriend Total: $29.40 I acquired five new pieces of makeup last month. Technically, I bought  only two of those, but I'm not letting myself off so easy. I could have spent that store credit on something else, and I didn't have to ask my boyfriend to bring me a highlighter from the UK. A product for which I don't exchange real money takes up just as much space in my collection as a product for which I actually swipe my card or hand over cash. I'm pretty pleased with all of my new playthings, at least. Reviews to come! Here I am w...

I don't know about you, but I find it much easier to destash makeup when I'm in a foul mood. The angrier I feel at the world, the more readily I can accept that a certain lipstick will never work for me and doesn't deserve a place on my shelf. In that spirit, I'm removing nine lipsticks from my collection today: The three Topshop lipsticks and the mini Givenchy are fairly recent acquisitions, but the other five have been kicking around for years and are very well-loved . In fact, all five were favorites of mine at one point or another, but have outlived their usefulness in my collection. It's hard to part with those lipsticks, but I know from experience that decluttering the makeup I no longer wear makes my collection less visually overwhelming. From left to right, we have MAC Pink Nouveau, Topshop Plastique, Topshop Boardroom, Maybelline Vivid Rose, Topshop Motel, Revlon Primrose, and MAC Creme Cup: And two stragglers, Revlon Red Velvet and Givenchy Noir Révélateur...

Welcome to the first, and saltier, of my two 2016 roundup posts! A few notes before we begin: There are 13 products on this list simply because I was disappointed by 13 products last year (not a large number, considering how many I tried).  As always, the products are listed in chronological order of purchase, not from best to worst or vice versa. I've linked to my original reviews where available.  I returned several of these products, sometimes too quickly to take photos. In those cases, I've used the brands' product shots. I also lost a number of my photos while clearing my phone's memory last year. Not all of these products are total fails. I kept and still use a few of them, since I don't subscribe to the KonMari doctrine of getting rid of anything that I don't absolutely love. Especially in the case of color cosmetics, if a product fulfills a specific purpose but isn't perfect, I'll often keep using it instead of buying yet another product in the s...