Matte and Metal Media

Sexy, Alluring, Confident

Just as the title suggests, forget rival colours such as the traditional red or the popular mauve tone, brown is the 90’s beauty trend making a comeback and is bolder than ever!

A vast spectrum of brown shades can be created by mixing just primary colours: red, blue and yellow. Each brown has its own complementary colour, depending on the ratio of primary colours used to create the shade.

The majority of people think brown lipsticks are synonymous with nude shades. I agree to an extent – it can be a nude depending on the person’s skin tone. However, unlike nudes, browns can be amped up as it can add dimension to the lips.

First step: Consider your skin’s undertone

Before picking out a brown lipstick, know the different undertones. The different undertones are warm, cool and neutral. Figuring out your personal glow can be taxing, but the general rule is people with cool undertones have veins that appear bluish in colour; have ash blonde or dark brown hair and suit blues, violets and emerald green (‘jewels) tones.  Warm undertones’ veins appear greenish in colour; can have black, brown or golden blonde hair and suit oranges, bronzes, brick reds (‘earthly’) tones. Neutral undertones can pull off any colour but do tend to favour one undertone

Second step: Consider your skin tone

For my fair skinned dolls, muted rosy, pinkish-browns look great as brown lipsticks. For my warm skinned dolls, warm chocolate brown really brings out your mocha skin tone. For darker skin tones, any colour light or dark browns can suit. The trick is if you have a light lipstick, use a dark brown lipliner to create an ombre effect so the light colour can blend seamlessly with your darker skin tone.

A big misconception that people often make is thinking that someone with cool undertones should automatically have fair skin and, conversely believing that those with warm undertones correspond to warmer/darker skin tones. However this isn’t always the case as hair colour, seasons even lighting can shift the way one perceives undertone; it’s not only saturation.

Now to the fun part, the lipsticks swatches and review!!

I have hand-selected 4 ‘true to colour’ cocoa brown liquid lipsticks to review. Each colour will be put to the test in regards to its pigmentation, consistency, comfort level, staying power and value for money.

I have shades Salem (LimeCrime), Chocolate Wasted ( Dose of Colors), Tootsie ( Coloured Raine) and Truffle Raine (Coloured Raine).

My UK dolls! Attention – these shades can be found on the Beauty Bay website – http://www.beautybay.com/ – as they stock these international brands. This is a god-send as shipping from America to UK can take up to 2 weeks plus the cruel 15.00 USD shipping fee. Beauty Bay’s warehouse is based in Manchester so the lipsticks come very quickly to your door!

Salem – Limecrime

This can be described as a true brown waterproof matte liquid lipstick. Think of melting warm chocolate – that’s the colour! This is one of the first liquid lipsticks I used constantly without getting chapped lips.

Pigmentation: Highly pigmented, very opaque, you only need one- two dips of the product for your top and bottom lip. It’s a mocha colour.

Consistency: The formula is amazing, LimeCrime products are PETA verified vegan and cruelty free. Salem doesn’t contain any animal-derived ingredients. It’s more liquid in texture compared to the other liquid lipsticks. It is easy to apply and glides on smoothly.

Comfort: Note that if you haven’t used liquid lipsticks before, this might feel dry to use, especially in comparison to matte lipsticks. To negate this effect, I would recommend applying some lip balm before applying Salem. This will make the lips feel more comfortable, yet still retain the matte effect.

Staying Power: This isn’t going anywhere!! I wore this to work. Applied this at 7 and came home around 5. Dolls, I DID NOT NEED TO REAPPLY! Trust me, the lips went through it – food, hot drinks, cold drinks, talking etc and they still looked good #humble

Value for Money: 16 pounds. Do I think it’s worth it? Yes, I do. Will I understand if my readers don’t want to spend 16 pounds on a 2.6ml lipstick? – that’s 0.16ml per pound. Not really, dolls!

A solid 5/5

Chocolate Wasted – Dose of Colors

This hue is a dark chocolate colour – looks like Godiva chocolate. Just a rich gorgeous colour.

Pigmentation: Good pigmentation and good opacity. The coverage is quite decent and I needed only one dip in the product to cover my top and bottom lips

Consistency: The formula feels different to LimeCrime. It’s more ‘moosy’ in texture and not as runny. It applies evenly and overall, a good product

Comfort: The formula is cruelty – free, vegan, gluten free and paraben free. This is more comfortable on the lips than LimeCrime’s formula. It is hydrating; moisturising and dries down to a satin matte as opposed to an ultra matte finish. They do not dry as fast as a normal liquid lipstick so allow for extra time to dry.

Staying Power: Unfortunately, ‘Chocolate Wasted’ lacked LimeCrime’s staying power. Throughout the day, the lipstick in inner rim of my lips started to crack and wear and I had to re-apply. The good thing is the peeling wasn’t that visible.

Value for Money: 16 pounds – 4.7ml so that’s 0.29ml per pound. Better value than Limecrime

An excellent 4/5

Tootsie – Coloured Raine

Have you ever seen bittersweet chocolate? The deepest brown shade of chocolate that almost looks black. Now envisage red undertones. Put these images together and you get Tootsie! Which is an apt name, given the lipstick literally resembles a Tootsie.

Pigmentation: The pigment in this!! Such a rich dark deep burgundy-brown shade

Consistency: The formula feels similar to LimeCrime. It’s runnier and like the others, it applies well on the lips. These are cruelty free, paraben free and vegan.

Staying Power: I’ve observed throughout the years, lighter shades have a greater staying power than their darker counterparts. However, this shade held its own. The only flaw in its design I would draw your attention to is this – around the 6 hour mark, the Tootsie lipstick tends to ‘feather’ into the lines around the mouth. This is not cute – therefore I would advise purchasing an anti-feathering lip liner or lip primer!

Value for Money: 15 pounds. There is 4ml in the lipbox so that’s around 0.27ml per pound… that’s more value for money than LimeCrime and Dose of Colours.

A good 3/5

Truffle Raine – Coloured Raine 

This is a very interesting shade – I haven’t seen a shade like this on the market before. There are absolutely no red tones in this brown! That’s not common. How do I describe this colour? It’s a warm chocolate shade with olive undertones. Yes, green subtle tones.

Pigmentation: Very opaque; covers all corners accurately; needed only one dip in the product to cover my top and bottom lips.

Consistency: The formula feels the same as Tootsie as both are Coloured Raine products. These are cruelty free, paraben fee and vegan.

Comfort: Same as Tootsie

Staying Power: Unlike Tootsie, this lipstick didn’t feather, crack during the day and didn’t smudge.

Value for Money: 15 pounds. There is 4ml in the tube so that’s around 0.27ml per pound. That’s very good value for money.

A solid 5/5

Final Verdict: These shades ranging from warm chocolate to the deepest dark cocoa hue can suit all skin tones! All gorgeous hues and I would recommend all my readers to purchase all these liquid lipsticks liquids.

Now for the winner! (Drum roll please…) — Salem and Truffle Raine! Congrats!

So Team MATTE, what do you think of these cocoa shades? Any favourites? Team METAL, do you want a metallic lipstick edition?

Let me know in the comments below! xx