ThE LiPSTiCK PRoJECT

I decided to wear a different lipstick each day from my inadvertently large collection.

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Discontinuation devastation

So as I was shopping around over the holidays, I was looking at Revlon's lipsticks and I have realised that they have discontinued two of my favourite lipsticks, Blasé Apricot and Orange Flip.

Orange Flip, in particular, is the lipstick that my friends continually prefer when I ask them which shade I should choose. My stick of it is dangerously short now, and I'm worried that Revlon has just swept it away.

Yeah well that's out of date now. Revlon seems to have done a clean sweep and got rid of many of the older shades. Blasé Apricot is gone, as are Revlon Red and Fire and Ice. Cherries In The Snow and Love That Pink were the only names I recognised from my recent perusal.

In Australia, Orange Flip and Blasé Apricot were sold in the 'Luxurious Living' range, which came in elegant, retro-style fluted gold tubes. I could still buy them on eBay or similar from the United States, where they're in the Moon Drops range.

The reason I liked these lipsticks isn't just because they are wonderfully smooth and brightly pigmented, but also because they provide a link with the past. I love old-fashioned perfumes for the same reason: because they link me with generations of other women who have enjoyed and felt beautiful in these products.

Perfume fans regularly bemoan the discontinuation or reformulation of favourites from the past, and speak indignantly of the ready market for vintage revivals if only the cosmetics companies would understand the value in them. 

Maybe I should just suck this up and try to find a replacement. MAC's Lady Danger, which all the bloggers rave about, seems very similar to Orange Flip.

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Darling by Savvy by DB

I wanted a bright, bluish '80s pink (as opposed to a red-tinged shocking pink or darker magenta) lipstick to replace my melted-down bright pink, and this discontinued shade was only $3 from Priceline.

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Magenta Gestalt Lipstick

This mixed my magenta and bright pink shades. To be honest it looks much like the magenta when worn; perhaps just a tad brighter.

This photo was actually taken 10 days ago. Today I am wearing a magenta cardigan and scarf. I wore this lipstick again and quite liked the colour; it's more a clear bright pink than magenta and I think it looks pretty with my skin and hair.

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Reeeeeemix!

So I was so unhappy with how the Red Gestalt Lipstick turned out that I decided to remix it using crayons. Lipstick Project watcher Amy told me about this, and it does make sense because what is a crayon, really, but a stick of pigmented wax? 

Luckily I actually have crayons in my Art Suitcase, so I fished out a couple that I felt might shift the colour away from dark pink and towards red: 

Yes. I have Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles crayons. Do not judge me. I broke off some crayon and melted it in with the rest of the lipsticks. I figured that the emollient properties of the other lipsticks would compensate for the wax.

It took ages in the microwave to melt the crayons down – maybe 60 seconds. I had to break up the wax with the pointy end of my tail comb. Pro tip: maybe turn the crayon into shavings with a pencil sharpener.

And here's the end result, applied with the tail comb in the manner of a spatula. Honestly I don't think it looks much different – although if I compare it closely it's now less pink, and perhaps more strongly pigmented than before.

My mother said, "You have enough lipstick to last you twenty years!" 

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Red Gestalt Lipstick

I'm so disappointed with this. If I hadn't added Blushing Nude it would probably be a proper red rather than this muddy dark pink. I already have heaps of crappy muddy dark pink lipsticks.

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Gestalt Lipsticks

Today I decided to melt down some of my older, broken and more used-up lipsticks into small containers. My mother gave me the containers after I told her of this plan.

Here are the tubes after I scraped the lipstick out using the pointed end of a tail comb. It's surprising how much extra lipstick is inside the bottom of the tube.

I decanted the lipstick into small pots, and then just microwaved them until liquid (about 30 seconds for the small pot and 45 seconds for the large one), mixed the colours together, and waited for them to set. The hardest part was scraping the residual bits of lipstick from the sides of the pot to incorporate into the molten wax.

Here are the final lipstick pots. The larger one is made from Cherry by Red Earth, Unknown Orange-Red, Chestnut by Dolly Bird and Blushing Nude by Clinique. I was hoping the three reds would cancel each others' extremes out to create a clear medium red, but I think it was a mistake to add the muddy beige of Blushing Nude.

The smaller pot contains a mixture of Unknown Mauve and Unknown Bright Pink. I'm more pleased with this colour, as it now looks like a brighter magenta that should go with the many garments and accessories I own in that colour.

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The project is complete

Okay, so it turns out I own 24 lipsticks.

In 1988, the Los Angeles Times reckoned that the average woman owned eight lipsticks. In 2009, the UK Daily Mail reported that the average woman owned five lipsticks but only carried one at a time.

The project has been fun! Even though I got a new phone halfway through which means the old pics look really blurry and crap. I have shaky hands and found it really difficult to take in-focus pics with one hand. Also you can tell how much I desperately need a haircut.

Just for the hell of it, I looked up a 2011 study by the US Food and Drug Administration about the lead levels of 400 popular lipsticks. The average level was 1.11 parts per million, and the leadliest lipstick they assessed was Maybelline Pink Petal with 7.19ppm. Only three of my lipsticks were on the list, and while Estée Lauder Candy had a worrying 1.78ppm, Rimmel Alarm only had 0.93ppm, and Clinique Raspberry Glacé had 0.57ppm. To put this in perspective, Health Canada's Natural Health Products Directorate (NHPD) limits lead in products applied to the skin to 10ppm.

Please feel free to vote for your favourite lipstick by 'liking' it. You can also use the 'ask' function above to ask me any questions about the project or any of the lipsticks therein.

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Golden Taffeta by L'Oréal

This is from the Infallible Lip Duo compact. The 'golden' bit is because allegedly it contains gold glitter. You put on the lipstick, wait a minute then seal with a glossy clear balm and it stays on fuh-EVAH. I like it as a day-to-day lipstick you can put on and forget about.

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Waterviolet by Clinique

You may have realised by now that all my Clinique lipsticks were Gifts With Purchase. This is from the 'Bare Brilliance' range of 'nude' shades. Despite the name it's more pink than violet, with glitter particles that create a gloss effect.

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Unknown Blue-Red by Guerlain

I know I've had this since 1998 as that's the datestamp on the base of the tube. The print has worn off the label so I don't know what it's called, but it's a long-lasting deep pinkish red similar to Rouge Grenade. Hell, it might even be Rouge Grenade. But it's much more pleasant to apply.

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Cherry by Red Earth

As far as I know Red Earth is defunct now. It was an Australian competitor for the Body Shop. I got a lot of wear out of this bright red until it got stuck in the lid; I had to apply with a lip brush which I just cannot be bothered doing on a regular basis. This one's getting melted down.

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Blasé Apricot by Revlon

One hot summer day I was dawdling in the local shopping centre to escape the heat and tried this on because it matched the top I was wearing (depicted above). Later I was thrilled to discover this was Ita Buttrose's signature lipstick and I bought myself one as a 'professional journalist lady'. Sadly I think the colour clashes with my hair, so I rarely wear it, but it lives in my handbag just in case. It's probably the most ridiculously named lipstick I own.

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Candy by Estée Lauder

I found this in my little white handbag. I thought of it as a 'nude' pink but it's just a little bit too pearly and bright. Still, a nice, cheerful, everyday pink.

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Blush In Nude by L'Oréal

My friend Penny gave me this lipstick, unopened, in a clean-out she did at the start of the year. Not to be confused with Clinique's Blushing Nude, it's from the Made For Me Lip Blush range and is marked as being for blondes, which is amusing as Penny is brunette and I'm a redhead. It's nowhere near rosy enough to constitute a 'blush': it's a frosted pink kind of neutral, which sets it apart from the beige tones you often get from 'nude' shades.

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Alarm by Rimmel

I bought this a few months ago as my go-to bright blue-red to replace Chestnut and Cherry. I really like its sweet, candyish smell, which oddly isn't the same as Shocking Pink. It applies with a lovely smoothness.

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Unknown Bright Pink

This is just a $2 shop cheapie, and definitely one of my oldest lipsticks. It was my stage lipstick when I did my comedy show. I quite like how bright and cheerful it is (it goes quite well with today's Seven Sisters outfit), and might try to find a replacement as this one's almost worn down.

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Unknown Mauve

This is perhaps my second- or third-oldest lipstick. It definitely dates from the '90s and long ago lost its identifying lid and label. I think it came from a $2 shop. I mainly wear it as 'period lipstick' when I'm going to a '90s theme party but I thought I'd give it a go today to match the fuschia in my dress (PS this is the dress I bought Rimmel Shocking Pink to match). It goes on much pinker than it looks in the tube, and has a very cheap, gritty, waxy texture.