Never settle in your search for The One
Lippy, that is, not lover
EVeRy few months, someone will insist I write about red lipstick ‘because you always wear it’. at this point I am forced to sigh and say: ‘No, that’s Dita Von Teese.’
Not only have I never had a scarlet pout, I also didn’t wear lipstick full stop until my 40s. My lips were naturally dark. My make-up loves lay elsewhere (foundation, cheeks, eyes), and a done mouth looked a bit ‘TV anchorwoman’ on me — ageing and too finished.
Still, time moves on and colour drains from the features, so a bit more oomph has come to feel like a good thing.
For lipstick is uplift, pure cheer. Churchill knew this when he kept it off the ration list, as he felt it was essential to Britain’s war effort. Liberators of concentration camps reported that a sense of humanity began to be restored with the arrival not of food, but of lipstick. as Coco Chanel insisted: ‘If you’re sad, add more lipstick and attack.’ Ditto if you’re happy — and especially if you’re meh.
By our great age, you ought to have found The One: your one and nobody else’s. What you need is a hue that makes your eyes zing and your skin gleam. Work out whether your colouring is warm, cool or neutral. Do earthy corals suit you (warm), or blueish pinks (cool), or can you veer either way?
Take your time, learn by comparison, and refuse to settle for anything less than staggering. There is an infinite number of colours you could wear. What I’m talking about is the shade it pains you to remove.
excessive as ever, my one is actually two — one colour played two ways. Lipstick Queen’s Hello Sailor (£16, beautyboat.com), a sheer, balm-like blue berry, is my great, low-key love. Charlotte Tilbury’s Matte Revolution Lipstick in Festival Magic (£25, charlottetilbury.com) is my proper lip: a full-force, purple berry banger that I daub on.
I strongly recommend allowing yourself a couple of different textures in the same ultrayou shade.
Mac’s Ruby Woo — a true red — is adored not only by Dita Von Teese, but also by angelina Jolie, Rihanna (before she launched her own range, Fenty) and Taylor Swift. a 22-year-old cult buy, it sells four tubes a minute worldwide, and five an hour in the Uk.
It has just been released in a number of new finishes under the banner Ruby’s Crew (from £17.50, maccosmetics.co.uk).
For a budget hit, I love Rimmel, Barry M and kiko. However, at times one can amp up the lipstick fillip via a greater spend. I recently took enormous pleasure in tracking down the precise shade favoured by the heroine of Netflix’s horror series Chilling adventures Of Sabrina and sporting it myself, despite being nearly three-and-a-half decades older. The lipstick? Christian Louboutin Beauty’s Very Prive (£73, net-a-porter. com), an ultra-pigmented burgundy housed in an ornate vial, suspended on a gold ribbon so you can wear it around your neck — make-up as jewellery. Guerlain’s Rouge G Luxurious Velvet Collection brings us 15 long-lasting mattes, including the one pictured on model Natalia Vodianova, above (£26, guerlain. com), which you can customise with six velvet cases, including houndstooth, striped and tweed designs (£32). Sleek and seriously chic, this is a lipstick that makes one glad to be alive.
all 43 shades of Carolina Herrera’s lipsticks can be even more artfully customised, with caps, initials, charms and tassels (£74, carolinaherrera.com). I
adore my art Deco green waves design with a stonking great black tassel, and waft it about constantly like the artwork it is.
The Rouge Dior Minaudiere lipstick set (£156, dior.com, from Friday) is the kind of cosmetic treasure my nieces would beat me to death for, then pry from my cold, lifeless hands.
Think: four lipsticks (Pink Rose, Red Pansy, Winter Poppy and Sparkling Peony) housed in an engraved gold clutch, with a chain to transform it into a shoulder bag. One can deploy it as a portable lip wardrobe, or use it to carry a single lipstick and credit cards.
If I’m lucky, my nieces may let me keep the Diorific lipstick being sold alongside it: Midnight Corolle (£32.50), which is precisely the right sort of jammy, purplish pink to make my heart sing.