The Liquid Lipsticks That Are Changing The Formula Rules

Is there a beauty brand left on the planet that hasn’t launched a liquid lipstick, especially in the wake of Kylie Lip Kit fever? You’d be hard pressed to find one. Yet when Charlotte Tilbury was shown the formula for one by the lab she works with, she dismissed it immediately. “I said ‘I don’t care, I don’t believe in it'” she recalls. “I’m obsessed with matte lips but I don’t like the car paint feel that it has.” So Tilbury challenged the lab to come up with a formula “where I wouldn’t look like The Mummy Returns.” They answered the call and the result is Hollywood Lips, whose formula includes hyaluronic acid, beeswax and sea lavender, extracted from a marine plant that provides plumping and firming benefits. “”When it goes on, it’s hydrating, it’s very smoothing and also gives you that plumped out lips, filling those lines,” she says of the ten shades, which launched last month. The applicator, shaped like a crescent, hugs the lips and is all part of Tilbury’s attempt to exert her expert touch. “I’m in the wand controlling people,” she laughs.

Another brand founder who didn’t get on board with the liquid lipstick trend right away was Susanne Langmuir of Bite Beauty. Given that the category has been overshadowing lipstick bullets in sales for the last two years, Bite’s parent company Kendo asked Langmuir about doing them. The problem was she still “obsessively” searching for alternative ingredients to meet her non-synthetic ingredient standards. She finally found when she was looking for in coconut alkanes and Monoi butter, which allows the product to go on like a gloss and flashes off to a semi-glaze finish as opposed to matte. Her version, Amuse Bouche Liquified Lipstick launched in 12 shades in June and just added six more a few weeks ago.