Lipstick Basics
19 articles
Max Factor Sr. gets the credit for inventing lip liner. He was a cosmetics chemist working in Hollywood, and the…
A tinted lip balm moisturizes and protects the lips while leaving a sheer, buildable wash of color. It lands somewhere…
Nothing on the packaging will tell you much here. "Tint" and "lipstick" are marketing words, and what you actually get…
What makes a lipstick nude is how close it sits to the wearer's natural lip color or skin tone. The…
Editors call it frosty lipstick, or pearl lipstick, and the names are interchangeable. What you get is an icy, metallic-pearl…
People usually land on cream lipstick because their lips are dry, or because a matte feels like too much effort…
The usual red lipstick meaning is some mix of confidence, power, femininity, allure and defiance, and the mix changes with…
Lipstick leaves a wax-and-oil film with pigment in it on the lips, and what that film does depends mostly on…
A 2025 survey in the Journal of Cosmetic Dermatology (Dulai and colleagues) asked dermatologists, residents and other health practitioners to…
Brands claim anywhere from 6 to 24 hours of wear from a long-wear lip liner, which is a wide gap.…
Ombre lips come down to one idea. Put the darker shade on the outer edge, keep the lighter one in…
Lip liner that gives out by lunch usually had a bad surface under it. Balm left on the lips, flaky…
Most lip liner mistakes come from buying a shade before deciding what the pencil is supposed to do. Matching the…
Check the base of the pencil before you reach for a sharpener. A fixed core needs a cosmetic sharpener, and…
Draw the liner on or just outside the vermilion border. Start at the cupid's bow, fill in the lip, blend…
Lip liner is mostly a prevention product. It outlines the lip border so lipstick stays where you put it, and…
Urban Decay's 24/7 Glide-On Lip Pencil has the longest wear claim of any liner in the sources reviewed, at up…
Almost nothing in a lipstick gets approved by a regulator before it goes on sale. Color additives are the one…
Lipstick labels mix up two different kinds of information. Words like matte, satin and glossy describe how the color looks…