Beauty bible

Perfecting your pout has never been easier

Celia Walden seeks out no-lipstick lipstick

DO YOU SUFFER FROM corpse lips? Find yourself pointing at the screen in those Silent Witness mortuary scenes, where some poor struggling actress with Touche Eclat smeared across her mouth is laid out on the slab having various organs removed, and stutter: ‘Hey, chalky chops! I know exactly how you feel!’ Because alongside curly eyebrows (I mean, why?) it’s definitely the most curious condition I suffer from.

Nothing makes me more envious than women with those naturally defined, bitten lips – and nothing gets me more excited than the kind of tinted balms that pass me off as one. Which is why I have spent half my life trying to identify the prettiest and most natural shades. Because no make-up make-up – like calorie-free cake – is the holy grail.

To be fair, I had thought I’d sourced the best. Any of your favourite lipsticks can be turned into insanely long-lasting balms when applied sparingly over Dr Frances Prenna Jones’s superhero balm, Lip Work (£25, drfrancesprennajones.com). It’s not easy to beat Maybelline’s Baby Lips Lip Balm in Cherry Me (£3.99, boots.com) or Burt’s Bees Matte Lip Crayon in Niagara Overlook (£9.99, johnlewis.com). Not to mention the two balm-and-colour mixes I came up with myself: T Leclerc’s Envy Lip Pencil (£12.90, sanareva.co.uk) over a slick of Guerlain’s Orchidée Impériale Eye and Lip Contour Cream (£140, harrods.com) would win every beauty award on the planet if they marketed it. The same goes for Abi Cleeve’s Skinsense Plumping Lip Cream (£28, skinsense.co.uk) over Cosmetics à la Carte’s Longlasting Gel Lip Liner in Guava (£26, cosmeticsalacarte.com).

And by the way, if you can’t find the the perfect ‘natural’ lip, contact Cosmetics à la Carte and the experts at this Chelsea boutique will make it for you. Otherwise these five are the finest corpse-lips antidotes out there.