TUBE THAT MADE LIPSTICK HISTORY

THE early Noughties. It was all about the presenter Cat Deeley look — expensive highlights, St Tropez tan, beaded handkerchief tops and a Motorola flip phone. And it was an era of too-glossy lips that your poker-straight hair stuck to, thanks to the Lancome Juicy Tube in the back pocket of your jeans. Juicy Tubes, a collection of fruityflavoured, high-shine lip glosses in easy-to-apply slanted tubes that barely required a mirror, launched in 2000 and quickly became a status symbol — the thing the popular girls at school had by the half dozen. The tubes were translucent, showing off the colour within and screaming collectability to those who had outgrown Beanie Babies. They also changed the fortunes of Lancome. Until then a byword for mature French sophistication, the brand moved into the new millennium having dispensed with my heroine Isabella Rossellini as its face and, with Juicy Tubes, made the Lancome name relevant to a younger generation. Lancome didn’t only reinvent itself. Thanks to Juicy Tubes, lip gloss became the default lip make-up of choice, with every luxury and High Street brand rushing to squeeze out a little of Lancome’s juice for themselves. I owned three Juicy Tubes — Melon, Cararamiele and Framboise — and while I was exceedingly pleased with them, I did feel like an impostor. One knows at 25 that one is cheese not chocolate, brunette not blonde, heel not flat, vodka not gin, Blur not Oasis — and lipstick not gloss. And so my relationship with sheer, shiny lips proved fleeting. It’s a testament to Lancome’s most legendary product that I even engaged in a flirt.