When you live in a city that gets by mostly on public transportation, you start to miss what cars smell like. New-car smell, obviously, but even the comforting hot box of McDonalds french fries—really anything beats the smell of someone's armpit on a crowded subway. Though to be fair, the leisurely lifestyle of drivers and shot-gun callers sometimes backfires. Suddenly, it's a 90-degree day—your car bakes in the sun and when you go in, you curse your seatbelt and steering wheel for third degree burns. But the truly devastating bit is when you realize you left a tube of lipstick in the glove box and it is now melted beyond the point of rescue.
Well, we had a good run, you think...unless you're adventurous and thrifty like the people at Too Faced who ran with the idea of melted lipstick and created a line of Melted Liquified Long Wear Lipsticks. The story behind them goes like this: Too Faced's co-founder and creative director Jerrod Blandino's fell in love with the jewel-toned, opaque goo that eventually turns into lipstick and decided to make alternative-product that never settled into a solid, keeping the melted color's integrity.
To do this, it required a little packaging revamp. Blandino and Co. used a Carmex-like squeeze tube with a velvety sponge-tip applicator that dispenses product in little beads when you squeeze it up. The benefit of this is that it provides a cushiony transfer on your lips while absorbing excess product so you can get even coverage results despite the lipsticks' tendency to ooze. Korean liquid blushes have also been experimenting with this packaging to really nice results.
But what makes these lipsticks so exciting is their color payoff. These are intensely pigmented, opaque, and smooth on the lips. The classic shades, released last year, were successful enough to merit the launch of eight new shades for spring. There's Strawberry, whichSephora describes as a “blood orange,” but really there's nothing orange about this. It's simply (and refreshingly so) just strawberry—not too red, not too fuchsia. Then there's the unexpected Villain, an intense dark grape. Is it too goth for spring? Maybe, but whatever floats your boat, right? If that's not your thing, there's the beige-y Sugar, a nude to end all other nudes.
If a formula like Lip Tar or a liquid lipstick confuses or intimidates you, Too Faced’s Melted Lipsticks are a good ease-in product. Die-hard lipsticks traditionalists need only try this gateway lipstick to feel more comfortable with exploring other, more slippery, options.
Photographed by Tom Newton.
