Painting The Town Red With Katie Puckrik - Part 1: Another Lippie Epiphany

Regular readers - or should I refer to you as irregular readers, as my posting frequency has been decidedly erratic since the house move - may recall that for a long time now I have been on a quest to find Holy Grail lipsticks in a variety of shades. I think I found the perfect nude-browny-pink in Burberry Nude Rose, and the perfect nude-and-not-too-vivid-or-trashy-pink in Dior Pisanelle Pink. However, the perfect red (or even a half-decent red that doesn't make me look like a clown, a hooker or Cruella de Ville) continued to elude me. Back in September, Katie Puckrik, a bit of a make up guru on the quiet, took up the discarded gauntlet / cudgels? on my behalf, and on the occasion of one of our whistlestop meetings at a cafe near Euston, her first act was to upend her handbag and spill a good dozen red lipsticks and lip glosses onto the table. (I wish I had taken a photograph of that!)

As a direct outcome of that testing session (on skin and on Katie in what I can best describe as the lipstick equivalent of a series of lightning costume changes), I went home and bought Revlon Sizzle Lip Gloss and Revlon Lip Butter in Candy Apple. Despite their being on Katie's shortlist of possible contenders for me, I couldn't quite believe in them myself. For I have a real mental block about red lipstick suiting me, partly based on my sallow colouring, but also to do with the relative thinness of my lips compared to Katie's pillowy pout. Somewhere I have taken on board the notion that red lipstick can be unflattering on mature skin. Sharon Stone gives the lie to that supposed "rule" here, but then I am not Sharon Stone, just her age.

KATIE, LOOKING EFFORTLESSLY GLAMOROUS IN A BEANIE

And then at the end of November, I was down in London again, and Katie kindly took me on a make up sampling spree in Selfridges before we headed off for dinner and the evening's (partly unscheduled) entertainment, of which more in Part 2. Sniffing wasn't so much on the agenda, as we had done a bit of that at Les Senteurs where we met up, but we did swing by the Dior display specifically so I could try Grand Bal. I am currently on a jasmine hunt for my Scandal- and Fracas-loving friend Sharon. She is a born-again tuberose lover, who is looking to branch out into other heady white soliflores, of which jasmine seemed as good an example as any. Anyway, I thought Grand Bal very pretty, like a quieter version of By Kilian Love & Tears, maybe. It was of necessity just a fleeting impression, because the sales assistant had no samples to give away. This surprised me, as Dior had always been pretty good bet for doling out those little 4ml pots in the past - hey, between me and Tara, who assiduously scored them on my behalf every time she was up the West End, I must have at least four of New Look alone!

No, the main objective of our dive into Selfridges was to slay this red lippie lemming of mine once and for all, and after a quick scope of every high end beauty counter from Yves St Laurent and Tom Ford to Benefit and Illamasqua, we narrowed the choices to Laura Mercier Crimson Tint and an Armani Sheer Red lipstick, the name of which escapes me. I plumped for the Laura Mercier in the end a) because Katie swore black, blue, white and red that it suited me, b) because it was cheaper than the Armani - I never actually got as far as inquiring, but you just know that it had to be! - and c) because my natural dark pink lip tone kept dragging the Armani red back to pinky-neutral YLBB territory. This was as unhelpful as looking foolishly scarlet, especially at that price, whatever it may have been.

ME WEARING LAURA MERCIER CRIMSON TINT, WHICH LOOKS STRANGELY HOT PINK IN THIS PHOTO

Some weeks have passed, and it is dawning on me that if I can carry off the Laura Mercier, I must have suited the other lipsticks all along, which are in similar vein really. The Revlon Sizzle is perhaps a slightly warmer, more orange-y red, while the Candy Apple is in the same sheer mid-red territory as the Laura Mercier. Crucially not too blue on my olive skin. So the upshot of all of this is that I have been wearing overtly red lipstick in public on a number of occasions since my outing with Katie. Nobody has screamed and recoiled in horror, not a single small child has pointed at me and sniggered, and no one has refused to serve me in a shop. This Christmas I may finally have overcome my irrational hang up about red lippie after all, just in time to accessorise the holly.

ME WEARING REVLON SIZZLE LIP GLOSS, WHICH LOOKS NEAR AS DAMMIT THE SAME STRANGE HOT PINK AS ABOVE, BUT REALLY ISN'T

NB Bonus points to anyone who spots Bloody Frida's pennants in the background!

Coming up in Part 2: The press night of The Card Shark Show, and an entertaining detour en route.


Photo of Dior perfume counter from speirsandmajor.com, other photos my own

"Got Lippie!" Dior Rouge Dior Pisanelle Pink - The First Purchase In My Holy Grail Lipsticks Quest

Okay, so I know the name of this blog is Bonkers about Perfume, not Bonkers about Lipsticks. As a matter of fact I did google that out of interest, and got my own blog (twice), right after some sponsored links for Max Factor, MAC and Clinique, haha! So you could say that it almost is Bonkers about Lipsticks in Google's eyes, and certainly that's where my head is at at the moment for some strange reason. I am frenetically reading beauty blogs (more so than perfume blogs, for the first time!) and drawing up shortlists of shades in all the high end ranges, which I plan to investigate further when I am down in London again next week.

I am still puzzling over what might have precipitated this restless quest to find the perfect lippie / gloss in each of the main shades that suit my colouring. The recession? My revolting hormones? The general insecurity of middle age? For I feel strangely driven to find "the one" or "ones" rather - it really is most peculiar. Though in fairness, I did something similar in the first year of fumeheadonism - the voracious reading, the lists, the Ebay stalking - before eventually abandoning the search and resigning myself to just settling down with my top 147 perfumes or so. So I do recognise a similar "sudden onset mania" coming upon me, more to do with lipsticks than any other category of makeup at present, but watch this space. Eyeshadows could well be next, or anything involving noticeable colour - I think colour is key.

But realistically how would it change my life if I did manage to find the optimum shade or three? Which probably won't be far off in tone from the handful I kept in my collection after ditching the 18 old or wrong 'uns in my recent cull. Lipstick is cheering, but not sooo transformative as to warrant the research I am putting into my hunt. And the evidence to date does rather point to the fact that I am still circling endlessly round the same lipstick shades in pinky-browny-nude-beige-rosewood.

I say that, because I have already made my first purchase(!) of Dior Rouge Dior Pisanelle Pink, following extensive scrutiny of my favourite blogs (links below). Blind, and on Ebay admittedly, but as blind buys go this was as good as it gets: the colour is exactly as pictured in the reviews, even on my highly pigmented lips. The only downside is the fact that it is a new tester with a generic white cap instead of the proper one - though I did only pay £15 for it including postage. So the sensory pleasure of using it is diminished by about 50% - as far as the packaging is concerned, anyway! I think it will be my last tester buy. At least with tester bottles of perfume, they may lack their box or come in a plain white one, but the bottle itself looks normal, or that is my understanding. There again, maybe some tester bottles come without a cap - not even a plain white one : - ) - perhaps someone can enlighten me on this point.

So anyway, here are a couple of pictures: one of the lipstick looking a bit odd and one of me looking a bit mad, but the lipstick is shown to good effect at least - that is exactly how it comes off (or goes on, rather) on my lips. I do have another photo where I look marginally less mad, but there is an awful lot of chin in that one, and I am sure you don't want to see that. Also, I haven't done any comparisons with the "pink probationers" in my previous post on this subject, because I figured there are only so many "lipstick line up shots" that a reader can bear! Well, partly that reason and partly the fact that I feel a bit silly for buying something in the same ballpark as what I already own... Also, dark as it may appear in the tube, Pisanelle Pink is definitely lighter than most of my current "pink nude" contingent when applied, as well as being more luxuriant and creamy in feel.

STUMPY LIPSTICK MUTANT

ME WEARING PISANELLE PINK AND LOOKING SOMEWHAT MAD

A few of my favourite beauty blogs that have helped me in my plethora-whittling efforts - the first link is to the review that clinched my purchase of Pisanelle Pink. (Also good for capturing its precise colour in the tube as well as on the model's lips, which may even be pigmentally similar to mine):

Café Makeup
The Beauty Look Book
Makeup And Beauty Blog
The Non-Blonde (of course!)
Get Lippie (of course!)
Best Things In Beauty
MyBeautyBlog (my blogger pal in Germany!)
Messy Wands
My Funny Valentine

And last but not least, the incomparably named Pink Sith

Then there are perhaps ten other blogs, including some British-based ones, which might also come up every time I google a different product, so this list is by no means exhaustive. However, it probably represents the blogs that are top of my head for me now.

In case anyone is concerned, I will be back with a perfume review in my next post. I am still Bonkers about Perfume, really - I just get sidetracked now and then... : - )


Photo of Holy Grail by Vitold Muratov via Wikimedia Commons, other photos my own

“Getting Lippie”: A Holy Grail-Hopping Tale, And How I May Yet Bite The Burberry Beauty Bullet...

Oh dear…my unintentional Wikio Beauty Blog rating just took another tumble, from 70 to 99. At what point do I stop trying to arrest its fall by knocking out another make up post? No that is not fair, for ever since Tara and I got lost in the wonderland of Harrods’ beauty counters, I have been planning to write about my luxury lippie epiphany, and so here finally is that post. It did cross my mind though, that at the rate things are going, there may come a point when my Wikio (aka ebuzzing) ranking is so embarrassingly low that I might as well take the badge off my blog. Or conversely brazen it out and leave it up there for its not inconsiderable comedy value. And if I do on occasions put up a cosmetics-themed post right after my ranking has plummeted again, it is more in the spirit of patting a toad to see how far – or indeed if - it will hop, rather than any serious belief that I could climb up the greasy pole (greasy because it is of course well moisturised) to a top 20 or even a top 40 Beauty Blog ranking.

But back to our muttons - or muttons made up as lamb - which is of course an ever present risk when you get to my age.

In a post last year, talking about her favourite sensory discoveries of the autumn across a variety of product categories, Katie Puckrik posed herself the question:

“Does makeup count as a sensory discovery? In my book (admittedly an absurd, rather disjointed book) it does.”

When I discovered the world of fragrance in my late 40s, I felt I had stumbled through a wormhole into a new sensory dimension which had more or less passed me by up till that point. I wondered at the time – and still do - if perfume was acting as some kind of HRT, evening out my moods through its ad hoc style of aromatherapy, and bolstering my femininity as I stood on the cusp between what it pleased me to think of as my “late youth” and the slow descent towards old age and invisibility.

For a long time I pursued my ideal of a Holy Grail Scent, and thought I had found it in Guerlain Plus Que Jamais until the “dark actors” at IFRA chopped its legs off. I still nurse the fantasy that one day I may smell the scent that is quintessentially me – or the me I would like to be, even – but for now I content myself with some near misses and my remaining stocks of PQJ.

And meanwhile I have recently discovered high end makeup...! Like Katie, I do consider it to be another type of sensory discovery - one that has the potential to be as good for my morale as it could be disastrous to my wallet.

Now I should point out that I haven’t made a purchase yet (aside from a Dior tester lipstick on Ebay that has yet to arrive), but I am eyeing up a few ranges – of lipsticks particularly – like a hawk circling its prey, and it can only be a matter of time before I go in for the fill. Okay, so that was a really bad pun, but lipsticks with alleged plumping properties are top of my wish list.

Then I have got it into my head that somewhere out there are my Holy Grail pink and peach lipsticks – maybe even a subdued orangey red, though anything else might be pushing it, "true reds" being a notoriously difficult shade range to pull off. That way lies a look which, on the wrong person, one beauty blogger tellingly likened to “the business end of a chicken”. Yes, I am proceeding with caution, keenly aware that for most of my adult life – for even longer than I went scentless – I probably wore lipsticks that were not especially flattering, some of them even featuring the derided characteristics to which Katie Puckrik also refers in her post of “yack-attack glitter, sparkle, or other gleamy crud”.

Slovenian chickens not showing their business ends

These klutzy choices I put down to a number of factors: misguided yet persuasive sales assistants - like the one in Boston who sold me the frosty orange MAC Jist and some super tacky clear gloss to go on top when I was well into my 40s - compounded by my own slavish belief in a matching look: “Oh look, there’s a neon coral red in a matt finish that goes exactly with my red Sloppy Joe sweatshirt!” Never mind that the occasion for wearing such a vivid red (even were I much younger and blessed with the appropriate skin tones to work the look) was never going to be a jogging outfit...

Beyond that, there were the many free lipsticks that came in those little cosmetics bags you get given when you buy two items of skin care or make up of a certain value from a high end brand. The GWP fosters a certain defiance in the purchaser: “Look, this Highland Heather Diamond Sparkle Shimmer lipstick was free, so I am damn well going to wear it.” And the catch-all reason for my other bad acquisitions is simply my general nerdiness and lack of fashion sense. Down the years I have displayed an unerring knack of wearing styles that a) do not suit my body shape in the first place – especially not in those ice cream pastel colourways and b) have come and gone and not yet come back again. I think the word for this may be “counter-cyclical” – when speaking of the economy certainly – but I do know that in fashion terms it is Not A Good Look.

But before I could correct the mistakes of a lifetime, and pursue a series of HGLs (Holy Grail Lippies) in the main shades I have a hunch I do in fact suit, there was a serious need to purge my many tatty cosmetics bags of their existing crud, both “gleamy” and otherwise. This is in fact a subject I have touched on in an earlier post in reference to make up generally.

Yes, it was time to pull the pillar box reds, bin the bolder browns, nuke the nudes, lose the lilacs, and give the hot pinks the old heave-ho.

Katie Puckrik herself urged me to be ruthless:

“Lipsticks: I beseech you to turn in any arms older than 5 years of age, and that's pushing it.”

In all, I chucked out 18 of my 27-strong lipstick collection, some of them dating back to the mid-80s. It wasn’t too much of a wrench once I got going, because when I put all the wrong ones together, they somehow managed to look wronger still en masse.

And even the ones I allowed myself to keep – partly on the grounds of their relative youth, but also my perception that they may suit me – I am not wholly sure about at this point, especially not the darker, slightly magenta-y end of the pink spectrum that narrowly escaped the cosmetics cull.

Red and pink pariahs

Peach and brown baddies

Pink probationers

Peach and brown probationers - note that brown on the far right doesn't come up nearly as dark as it looks, and was a personal recommendation by Wordbird, so trust me on this...

Going forward, the problem I have is that my skin is naturally yellow/sallow in tone, while my lips are quite pigmented with an almost mauve tint to them. The bottom line is that my complexion doesn’t go with my lips, so the deal is either to find something that will cover the pigment of my lips and work with my skin, or let my natural lip colour take precedence and match my lipstick to that, thereby running the risk that my mouth will clash horribly with the rest of me.

I have found a few new shades I like such as Burberry Beauty Lip Mist in Feather Pink, and have also earmarked A TON for future investigation: the Chantecaille Lip Chic and NARS Lip Gloss ranges, plus other untested shades in the Burberry Lip Mist and Lip Cover ranges, but for now the HGLs continue to elude me.

And then just yesterday, Mrs Bonkers Senior gave me a freebie Clinique lip gloss she had no use for – Clinique Superbalm Moisturising Gloss - in Ginger. Mrs Bonkers Senior is more of a Vaseline person when it comes to lip care. So I put it on today and it was very moisturising – a bit sticky and a bit too glossy maybe - but most of all what struck me was the colour: it was YLBTS – "Your Lips But The Same".

So now at least I know that if anyone asks me what exact colour my lips are naturally, I can truthfully say "ginger"...

UPDATE: I hope that if I do get around to buying one of those ultra-slinky bullet shaped Burberries, I don’t literally bite it, as the title suggests. For I have just watched a Lisa Eldridge make-up tutorial on YouTube about five different ways to wear the same lipstick (Tom Ford Black Orchid). There was in fact one understated look that Lisa demonstrated which she referred to as a “stain”, but grape-coloured stains on your teeth wasn’t it.

And I realise we have been talking about lipstick, but I have now watched a bunch of other videos by Lisa and it has been a revelation! I feel I am being mesmerically sucked into a vortex where magical transformations happen, and that I am poised to make a slew of purchases of tools and make up items in other categories. Brow care! Eyelash curling! Armouries of brushes! Yes, it has been a real eye-opener – or it would be if I put a white dot in each inside corner.


PS Thanks to the Get Lippie blog for inspiring the title of this post. : - )

PPS Any lipstick recommendations for my challenging sallow skin-and-mauve lip combo gratefully received!!


Photo of girl with red lips from re_ via Flickr CC, photo of tree from tubbus via Flickr CC, photo of Shiseido office from DaraKero_F via Flickr CC, photo of Clinique Superbalm Moisturiser in Ginger from harlowstar.co.uk, photo of Burberry Lip Mists from Burberry's website, photo of Lisa Eldridge from sweethealthnut.com, other photos my own