Remembrance of Things Passe : When the coral and crimson and rubies of her lips can be bought at the drugstore and saved for a lifetime.

Some people save the first dollar they ever earned; I have my first lipstick. In my closet is a large box of lipsticks, a few kept for more than three decades. Most are useless as cosmetics, but they are reminders, as exact as excerpts from my diaries, of what I used to be and how I came to be what I am now.

My passion for lipstick goes back to childhood. One of my early memories is of standing before a mirror trying to color my mouth with a red crayon. I liked to open my grandmother’s handbag, search for her Tangee, and swivel it slowly up and down. I still recall the sweet fragrance and vivid orange color that somehow became muted when applied to the lips.

Although I don’t associate a particular lipstick with my mother, I remember her process of application: upper lip, lower lip, blot, reapply. She now wears lipstick if my sister or I pick it out for her, but she’s never shared our delight in going to cosmetic counters and trying on different shades for the better part of an afternoon, always seeking the perfect hue with the perfect sheen that will transform our faces, and thus our lives, forever.

Often it’s not the color but the name that lures me. Who could resist Honey Amber, Plum Silk, Iced Rubies? I’m seduced by the rhetoric of lipstick, the way the adjectives kiss the nouns. Even Susan Brownmiller, whose book “Femininity” is strongly anti-cosmetic, can reel off the names of the five shades she wore in high school. Yet she maintains that “a brightly painted mouth” never did anything positive for her face, conversation or kissing. For me, a lipsticked mouth can dramatically enhance all three. Perhaps Brownmiller gets by just fine with a swipe of Vaseline, but my lips cry out for color.

I’m not alone in thinking that lipstick improves my words, maybe even my mind. A colleague who teaches philosophy swears that her lectures grow dull as she nervously gnaws off her lipstick. A poet assures me she finds it impossible to write unless her lips are glossed. My friend Terry insists she could never have learned a syllable of French without her rouge a levres: “Lipstick makes it easier to pronounce eu. “

You discover much about yourself by looking at your old lipsticks. “Was I really like that?” you ask. “Was I once brave enough to use up almost a whole tube of Stormy Scarlet?” Sometimes I like to dig through the box in my closet. The past is hidden there, a clue in every hue.

I find the Golden Brandy I wore in college, the Soft Sea Spice my sister wore on her wedding day. Here’s the burgundy that perfectly matched my coat one winter. More memories, long abandoned, return as colors become flowers--geranium and hibiscus, lilac and violet. And every shade of roses, roses, roses. To stimulate remembrance, Proust had his madeleine: I have my Maybelline.

Many of the cases are so worn that I can no longer read the names on the bottoms. A few must have changed color over the years. Would I really have purchased a blue lipstick? Here’s one I can’t part with because my father bought it for me. Goodness knows how many decades I’ve had this Mucho Gusto Coco Loco, and yet it still smells like fresh chocolate.

Some of the lipsticks I’ve saved so long have never been used at all. Why haven’t I tossed them out? Because lipstick fuels not just our memories but our great expectations, our dark desires. It helps narrow the distance between the real and the imagined self. I always convince myself that next summer I will be tan and that shade I’ve never worn will at last look right. Or I might yet become dramatic and be able to get away with fiery fuchsia and torchy red. This Bare Berry didn’t look good on me but was dazzling on Cheryl Tiegs on a magazine cover in the spring of 1980. Maybe I’ll try it again.

I have never agreed with those who suggest that cosmetics are camouflage. Makeup isn’t a way to cover your face, but to discover it. Lipstick isn’t a means of oppression, but of expression. Do feminists wear it? Read my lips.