Sometimes, after experimenting with new choices, it's best to go back to old standbys. Though I love trying out the new brands on the market--AWAKE, Napoleon Perdis, InsertHotMakeupBrandHere--I'm reminded every so often that the reason such brands as Estée Lauder are still around is that they make really quality products. I've almost never been disappointed by an Estée Lauder lipstick, and been very surprised by several as to their high quality and lasting nature. Here's a look at one of Estée's more recent line changes, the "Electric Intense" lipsticks, in color #726, "Fury".
The short version: The name's right on--this is a bright, furious red. It's electric, intense, long-lasting, and darned attractive to boot.
Candidate: Estée Lauder Electric Intense Lip Créme, #726 (Fury)
Purchased: Gloss.com Presented by Estée Lauder and the House of Chanel
Cost: $22.00
Brand Info: Estée Lauder Cosmetics, Inc.
Founded in 1946 by Joseph and Estée Lauder, the company that would eventually become a US$5B corporation started out with only four products: "super rich all-purpose cream", "cream pack", cleansing oil, and skin lotion. Two years later, they established their first presence at a department store, Saks Fifth Avenue, in New York. The company expanded and went international in 1960, then diversified into a number of specialized brands--Aramis for men, Clinique for specialized skin care, Prescriptives for custom-blend colors, etc.--and purchased others, such as M-A-C and Bobbi Brown. But Estée Lauder maintains its own brand of foundation, lipstick, face makeup, skin care, and a huge range of perfumes.
The Tube: Rectangular. Blue lacquer plastic, with a gold-toned corner of the column that extends from top to bottom on the right front edge. The interior tube is metallic gold. On the bottom is a gold sticker with black print with lots of small print, but the color name and color code number are in good-sized print in the center of the sticker.
The Product: True Red, as red as red gets. The lipstick itself appears almost matte, with a teardrop-shaped delivery point (and a slight concave edge...#sigh#).
The Application: Incredibly smooth. The product name isn't misleading--it goes on Electric Intense in its coloring. Only problem is the slightly concaved edge on the delivery tip sometimes colors outside the lip lines. Color is cherry red, a nice change from what I expected (colors named for fiery things like "Fury" sometimes go on more orange than cherry).
The Taste: Figs. I happen to really love the taste of fig preserves--my paternal grandmother had a fig tree in her backyard and she made "mock strawberry preserves" using figs and strawberry jello, and to this date I still think it's the best jelly I've every had--so I have a special affinity to Estée Lauder's lip products, since they all smell and taste like figs. My mother, OTOH, hates figs, so she gives me all the EL lipsticks she gets in GWP assortments.
The Blot: Bold, bright, cherry red. A second blot is also strong.
The Wear: One of the few things I didn't like about this lipstick was that it does tend to come off easily after application, and you end up staining your fingers if you're eating finger food. Worse, it has a tendency to smear until it sets up, meaning if you wipe off a smudge near your lips, sometimes another smudge gets left behind if your tissue touches the lips while smudging. However, once you've blotted enough to take off the loose coloration, the remaining lipstick has a good 2-3 hour wear time, and because the color is so bright, it gives the lips a bit of a stain so that the wear-down isn't as noticeable.
The Verdict: Not perfect, but pretty darn great. And I love a great red lipstick.
Sunday, March 02, 2008
The Hunt For The Perfect Lipstick: Estee Lauder Electric Intense Lip Creme, #726 ("Fury")
The Hunt For The Perfect Lipstick: AWAKE Lip Gloss Brilliance Stardom ("Fairly Pink")
When purchasing Christmas gifts, I usually tried to take advantage of sales going on to pick up brands of cosmetics I might not have tried previously. Such was the case in this purchase, a gift-boxed collection of AWAKE Cosmetics' Stardom Color series. The box, a fiberboard box with a slab of cedar in the base, covered with metallic red and silver cardstock covering and light padding, with a sheet of etched plexiglass (with the AWAKE logo, an unfurling fern leaf) in the lid. The box is gorgeous. The items in it are quite pretty, though rather small, even for samples. In the sample selection is a tube of AWAKE's Lip Gloss Brilliance in "Fairly Pink".
The short version: Don't bother. Pretty exterior, lacking product.
Candidate: AWAKE Lip Gloss Brilliance Stardom (Fairly Pink)
Purchased: The Neiman Marcus Group, Inc.
Cost: $24.00
Brand Info: AWAKE by KOSE America, Inc.
A leading cosmetic company in Japan and the creator of the AWAKE brand, KOSE has been pioneering cosmetics and skin care products in Japan since 1946 and has grown to become the third largest cosmetics company in Japan. With its roots as an established brand in Japan, AWAKE launched in the U.S. in 1997 at Henri Bendel in New York. The brand has since opened up in prestige department stores such as Neiman Marcus, Bergdorf Goodman, specialty stores Bath & Body Works and C.O. Bigelows, and is also available on beauty websites including NeimanMarcus.com and Beauty.com.
The Tube: Clear PETE plastic, pinch-sealed at the end like a standard tube of toothpaste (or inexpensive lip glosses). Metallic red screw-on lid covers a molded plastic delivery point, again like inexpensive lip glosses. Print on the tube is silver, which makes it very hard to read when the product inside is a pearlized silver/white pink.
The Product: Pearlized pale pink in color. Also looks to be filled with shimmering pigments.
The Application: Wow. Goes on heavy, gloppy, slick. Smells like cedar or pine, and I can't tell if that's the product itself or an artifact from the interior of the box having that same aroma. Once it's smoothed out, it becomes sheer with a little bit of shimmer; not much color at all.
The Taste: Cedar/pine. It's somewhat harsh and very unexpected. I've read elsewhere that AWAKE tastes strongly of "botanicals" (code for "tastes like grass or plants"), but this was not what I expected to taste.
The Blot: Colorless blot (a tiny bit of the pale pink color shows up on the tissue).
The Wear: Gets stickier the longer it's on. Fortunately, that won't be long; it's gone rapidly when you eat, drink, lick lips, etc.
The Verdict: Seriously, don't bother, unless you like sticky pine tar on your lips.
Saturday, March 01, 2008
The Hunt For The Perfect Lipstick: Five From Maybelline
I've become something of a lipstick snob during this hunting process, I'll admit. I miss the old days when I thought of "lipstick" as just something you pick up in aisle 15 along with the rest of the health/beauty supplies. There are some great lipsticks in the aisles of Target, Walmart, grocery stores, etc. But most of them can't hold a candle to their counterparts at department stores.
Case in point: This quintet from Maybelline New York. They're not bad lipsticks, but they're also not good lipsticks, and for the money I spent to buy these five tubes, I could have gotten a tube or two of my favorite M-A-C colors. I remember wearing Maybelline as a kid. But I don't remember the heavy cucumber taste or the distinct lack of appreciable weartime.
Anyway, onto the reviews...
Candidate #1: Maybelline New York Moisture Extreme Lipcolor, #190 (Royal Red)
Purchased: Target (Arlington, VA)
Cost: $6.50
Candidate #2: Maybelline New York Moisture Extreme Lipcolor, #215 (Midnight Red)
Purchased: Wegman's (Dulles, VA)
Cost: $6.50
Candidate #3: Maybelline New York Moisture Extreme Lipcolor, #360 (Cherry Brown)
Purchased: Wegman's (Dulles, VA)
Cost: $6.50
Candidate #4: Maybelline New York Wet Shine Diamonds Liquid, #30 (Plum Solitaire)
Purchased: Big Lots (Sterling, VA)
Cost: $1.00
Candidate: Maybelline New York Wet Shine Diamonds Liquid, #50 (Mauvey Rock)
Purchased: Big Lots (Sterling, VA)
Cost: $1.00
Brand Info: Maybelline New York, Inc.
Founded as a mail order business in 1915 by Chicago businessman T.L. Williams, who had created a mascara for his sister Mabel two years earlier, Maybelline (a combination of "Mabel" and "Vaseline") soon became one of the early success stories in the cosmetics industry. By 1920, the company was selling eyeshadow and added eyeliner to its list of products in 1930. By 1932, Maybelline had expanded to retail stores and grew into a nationwide company. With the invention of the first mass-market automatic mascara (that is, premoistened in a tube with an embedded brush), Ultra Lash, in the 1960s, Maybelline had hit the big time and was bought by Plough, Inc. (later Schering-Plough) in Memphis, TN. The company remained headquartered in the Memphis/Little Rock area until it was sold by its next owners, Wasserstein Perella, in 1996; its headquarters moved to New York City and the company took on the brand name "Maybelline New York". Celebrities such as Lynda Carter, Christy Turlington, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Zhang Ziyi, and Kristin Davis have appeared in Maybelline ads through the years. Today, Maybelline is a part of the L'Oréal group, along with a number of supermarket and department store cosmetic brands, making L'Oréal the largest conglomerate in the cosmetic marketplace.
The Tubes: The "Moisture Extreme" lipsticks come in a pearlized burgundy plastic tube, with a chrome ring at the midpoint join, and an odd curved top almost like a saddleback to the lid of the tube. On the bottom of each tube is a sticker whose color approximates the color of the lipstick inside, upon which appears white print ringing the color number and color name ("Maybelline" on the top of the ring, "Maybelline LLC, New York, NY 10017 U.S.A." on the bottom of the ring). The "We Slick Diamonds Liquid" tubes are clear PETE plastic content holders with chrome tops to act as a handle for the applicator; each takes up approximately half the length of the top itself. The clear tubes are printed in silver writing with the name of the product; on the bottom of the tube is a clear sticker with the tiniest white print bearing the name of the product and the manufacturer's name in a ring, and the color number and name inside the ring of text.
The Products: Royal Red looks true red. Midnight Red looks burgundy. Cherry Brown looks like a cherry coca-cola. So far, so good. However, "Plum Solitaire" looks like hot pink bubble gum with a ton of glitter dumped into it, and "Mauvey Rock" looks like a dusty rose paste also with a ton of glitter dumped into it. Somebody working the "Wet Slicks" department needs to take color ID 101.
The Application: The three lipsticks go on really smooth and really dense in pigment, but they have concave tips, and I don't think I need to go there again. The two lip glosses have doe-foot sponge applicators that hardly hold any pigment at all--seriously, just the tiniest dot remains even after you dip and swab hard against the side of the product reservoirs. And don't even try putting them on top of existing lipsticks; the undercoat will smear and get stuck to the wand, and you'll hardly get any gloss at all. HATE.
The Taste: The lipsticks taste like cucumbers. If you like that, great. I don't. The Wet Slicks have no taste, but they are gritty as all-get-out. Seriously, it's like rubbing fine-grain sand into your lips. HATE.
The Blot: Heavy, heavy blots. Royal Red turns tomato red on my lips, which is very disappointing. The lip glosses blot decently.
The Wear: Pigment from the lipsticks gets all over everything, especially your hands if you're eating finger food. Worse, if you sip from a bottle of water or coffee cup, you'll end up with a lip print that stays on the bottle and reprints itself onto your face when you take your next sip. The lipstick color does seem to hold on for a while, but only as a dye and not as a true lipstick cover. The lip glosses hold on a while longer, but start feeling tacky as well as gritty after a while.
The Verdict: Unless you like cucumber-flavored lipsticks or gritty lip gloss, my advice is to stay far, far away from these Maybelline products.
