guest blog: the quest for the perfect red lip…
While I was chatting and twittering and emailing all my friends in the blogger community, an old, sweet friend wanted to share her thoughts on finding her perfect lip mate.
Hello, my name is Karen, and I’m on a quest for the perfect red lipstick.
I was 13 when I bought my first red lipstick. I’d started making my own decisions on what I wanted to wear in school about this time – no longer was I relying on my mother’s fashion picks. I was influenced by two things – a friend who wore Clinique’s Cerise shade with panache, and my mom’s Vogue and Cosmo magazines. I’d picked out an all black ensemble from the racks of K-Mart and a red Cover Girl lipstick. At the time I felt like one of those bombshells with bedroom eyes and scarlet lips in the magazines – mysterious, sexy, sophisticated. I slicked on that red and donned my all black ensemble like armor against the wars of high school, and I fell in love with red lipstick. (Looking back on it, it was a terrible shade of orange-red that probably made me look like a clown. I’ve learned my lesson about complimentary colors and a balanced face since then.) My junior and senior year, I dropped my hard Burger-King-earned cash on 99 cent lipsticks from Artmatic and Wet n’ Wild. My favorite was a blue-based red that looked like dried blood under fluorescent streetlights. In college, I bought lipglosses that gave my mouth a shiny sheer red glaze, like I’d been eating popsicles. When I left school and had to get a job, I toned down the ultra-dramatic look of matte powder, black eyeliner and mascara, but I still wore red lips.
I can’t tell you how many red shades I’ve bought since then. It has to be at least fifty – maybe even over 100. Searching for the perfect red lipstick is like looking for the Holy Grail. There’s a slim possibility that it MAY exist, but in all honesty it’s only to be found in fantasy. My ultimate red lipstick has the following traits: creamy, but kind of matte – not too matte that it dries out my lips; non-feathering; stays on without feeling cakey or requiring too many touchups over the course of the day/night; blue-based; not too bright or dark so I can wear it to work but still looks dramatic when I wear it out at night.
See what I mean about the perfect red lipstick being a fantasy? My quest is never-ending. I’ve narrowed it down to about five shades in my makeup box now (MAC Russian Red, L’Oreal Crimson Joy, MAC Powerhouse, Cover Girl Incredifull Ruby Rush, and the fifth was Stila lip glaze in Cranberry. It’s a lovely sheer red gloss. Sadly, I no longer have it – I think I lost it!), so I may be getting close…
