LIP SERVICE The newest lip tools and tweaks for puckering up.
An enduring beauty bag staple, lip products have come a long way. Remy Rippon discovers the newest tools and tweaks for puckering up.
There are certain beauty products that feel so utterly foreign that for at least the first three applications you’ll only get so far as the front door before you’re racing back to the bathroom to reacquaint yourself with makeup remover. There’s a genuine fear of looking too “done”, looking unlike yourself, or worse, not feeling like yourself. Then somewhere beyond the third attempt it starts to feel normal, routine even, like your favourite grey marle T-shirt, and slowly but surely it edges itself into your beauty repertoire until you don’t recognise yourself without it. Liquid eyeliner fits neatly into this category, as do brow pencils and powders, but the product that takes the foreign-until-favoured trophy is a bold, unapologetic lipstick.
More than any other product in our beauty bags, brazenly strong lips say: “I’m confident, sexy, and I don’t mind what you think.” We only need to look so far as the terminology and product offering we’re being fed by beauty brands to see it’s becoming increasingly uninhibited. Ever the boundary-pusher, make-up maestro Pat McGrath’s latest release for Pat McGrath Labs, provocatively dubbed Lust 004, is a three-step lip application process, with the end result looking as though the wearer has fell victim to a pot of glitter. The three lustrous shades – Flesh, Bloodwine and Vermillion Venom – are bold, sexy and utterly modern, and the brand’s website even forgoes the usual lingo, describing them as a “collection of perverse lip paraphernalia”.
Likewise, Giorgio Armani is referring to Lip Magnet, its newest launch, as a second skin. As a matt liquid lip colour it’s veil-thin, clings to the contours of the lips and stays put for the entire day, no mean feat according to Giorgio Armani international make-up director, Linda Cantello. “The fact we’re reinventing something that is really comfortable and works and is very simple, I think that is very exciting, but I also like the vividness that you get from the colours too, when you can build that up.”
And who better to channel this new mood than everyone’s favourite wild child Kristen Stewart, who fronts the campaign
A BOLD TONE OFFSET BY A MATT FINISH CAN GIVE A WEARER OF ANY AGE A YOUTHFUL ALLURE
for Chanel Rouge Allure Ink? The imagery of Stewart – who manages to make a Chanel pearl-encrusted jacket look tough – teams an intense swipe of liquid lipstick with just the right dose of rough-and-tumble edge.
If, however, you feel your lips are keeping you from sporting the season’s statement smile, a trip to the doctor’s office may be in order. Thankfully, the new method of non-surgical lip procedures has shifted from a bigger-is-better approach to a more corrective method to create symmetry (top to bottom as well as right to left), even out perioral fine lines (the crepe-y squiggles on the lips that worsen with age and are often exacerbated by lipstick settling into the folds) and address flattening of the cupid’s bow and a downward turn of the edges of the lips (hello, perpetual resting bitch face).
A 2014 study of the effect of facial expressions on first impressions found that a person’s mouth shape is directly linked to approachability. In the same way that a smooth complexion overrides fine lines and wrinkles when you are subconsciously determining the age of a stranger, our brains automatically associate a pillowy smile with youthfulness and being, well, pleasant.
While you might assume that the lips age more quickly than other areas of the face (they don’t – the eye area takes the cake there), they do begin to show signs of ageing as early as our 30s, and get progressively worse. “It tends to be a few lines when you purse lips. In those situations we tend to want to reduce the risk of those lines becoming permanent, and in most cases we use a very, very minute dose of Botox to reduce permanent line formation,” says Sydneybased plastic and cosmetic surgeon Dr Steven Liew of the small lines that fold like an accordion and begin to show above the lips.
Cosmetic and laser dermatologist Dr Michelle Hunt also warns that the lip area can be hyper-sensitive: “It can be treated similarly to other areas of skin, although it may be more sensitive to irritation from topical agents.” Her directive is clear: “The same basic rules apply, though: wear moisturiser and sunscreen, and avoid smoking.”
Whether we’re diligent or not, inevitably as we age the distance from the nose to the lips becomes longer, due to the overall structure of the lips becoming lax and the underlying bone support deteriorating. And applying lipstick won’t get any easier: these changes mean colour has a tendency to “bleed”, and by the end of the day more lipstick ends up outside the lines than in. Though Dr Liew admits it’s a easy fix: “That is pretty simple with a small amount of dermal filler to plump up the lip and also to create this thing called the white row, which is basically the space between the skin and the lip. It’s almost like redefining the beautiful demarcation between the skin of the lip, and also a little bit of filler in those lines.” Like a deflated tyre that’s been given a pump of air, one colleague’s lips appeared ever so slightly fuller post-procedure, and the transition from lip to skin was more defined.
Nevertheless, we shouldn’t overlook the power of your beauty kit when it comes to maintaining a youthful pout. Like the well-documented plum pouts Peter Philips created for models at Dior last season, a swipe of lip gloss over your go-to colour will deflect light – and therefore attention – from any fine lines beneath. Highlighter also lifts a lifeless cupid’s bow, and using a lip liner not only for the edges but across the entire lips ensures everything stays put for longer (be sure to dab off excess moisturiser or natural oils from the lips beforehand to aid longevity). And like the look that Lynsey Alexander created at Mary Katrantzou, a bold lip colour offset by a matt finish can give a wearer of any age a modern, youthful allure.
But perhaps Cantello best sums up the e ultimate appeal of the lips via a chancee encounter at the Giorgio Armani offices. “We have this beautiful girl who works in the marketing department who kind of looks like Betty Boop, in the best possible way,” she explains. “She is so cute, and she always has the latest lip product on. She came in and was I like: ‘Oh my god, what have you got on your lips?’” And just like that, the case for the lips is sealed.