lip service
Until recently, the only lip gloss I owned was a tube of cinnamon-scented Bonne Bell Lip Smackers filched from an 8-year-old girl’s dress-up kit-- she much preferred the Watermelon and Cotton Candy flavors that I left behind. This product stayed in my purse for years, something to grab when lipstick would have been overkill but a glance in the rearview mirror told me I bore the bloodless, chalky-lipped look of a 19th century tuberculosis patient, a look that I can’t bear to perpetrate on the world even if it’s just to toss a video in the drop box at Blockbuster. When the little tube finally ran out, I sorely missed it. Rather than run out to Toys R Us for a replacement, I decided to look over the new crop of grown-up lip glosses--some frosty and moonscapy, others that look like vinyl (and feel like flypaper), and still others so dark and gelatinous that they’re almost sinister.
The first thing I learned was that wearing these new, heavily pigmented lip glosses is a skilled, high-maintenance undertaking, one best suited for formal occasions--and preferably those that take place in relative darkness. Lip gloss, even when applied correctly, is fickle. Dare to eat a grape and that deep-purple Nars Rollerina with the sheen of patent leather is gone. Wear that darkly iridescent Glossimer Galaxy lip gloss by Chanel out to dinner, and you’ll be running to the restroom for touch-ups so often that your date will think you have an eating disorder or a crack-cocaine habit. Not that Glossimer Galaxy isn’t gorgeous, but it’s best worn to an awards ceremony where you won’t be eating or kissing anything besides air.
Regular old lipstick requires a steady drawing hand, but otherwise it’s forgiving. Colored gloss, on the other hand, must be applied in a uniform thickness or else it looks splotchy and streaky. The margin of error here can’t be more than a micron--remember, these are some viscous little molecules we’re talking about--and the lips themselves are soft and uneven. Application can be as frustrating as spreading peanut butter on a slice of soft bread. Wand applicators are useless. Worse still are the pots you must dig around in with a brush or finger. Neither is suited for putting on in public, which eliminates one of my favorite ladies lunch rituals: the moment when all present pull out lipstick and compact and pout, smack and blot in symphony, followed by composed smiles and nods all around. It’s the ultimate female power gesture, and it can’t be done with lip gloss. Alas.
The frosty glosses are just as aggressive as the dark ones, yet more forgiving, and they can be worn all day. If you want to look like Angie Dickinson in “Police Woman,” with silvery, orange-Creamsicle lips, try Chanel’s Glossimer Volage or Bibo’s Tattle Tale, and throw on a buff trenchcoat and lots of hairspray. Other glosses are light enough to be worn almost anywhere. Bliss cosmetics has come out with Blissgloss, a “pot” of gloss that is flat like a compact, and hence does not get under your fingernail. Their Nudge is a color that less imaginative companies would call “raisin,” and which slides on in a light, even layer. Another find was M.A.C Lipglass in Greed, a vinyl-glossy, intense mauve that is glamorous without being melodramatic and works for day or night. Lipglass is one of the best of the high-end products, tacky enough to stay on for an hour or so-- this is a long time for lip gloss--yet not so densely pigmented as to be impossible to get right. Another daytime favorite is Speak Easy from Bibo, which is fairly opaque and high gloss but flesh colored, resulting in a particularly dignified and finished look. You can’t wrangle either of these products from a wand onto your lips without using a mirror, Kleenex and your finger, but they’re still awfully pretty.
What I found, eventually, was that the main advantage to the high-end products may be the fact that they don’t smell like cotton candy, mangoes or fudge. The exotic glosses have their place in any complete makeup arsenal, but the truth is the same today as it was in the 1970s--lip gloss is best as a casual daytime accessory. For this purpose, the cheap stuff is every bit as good, if not better. At the corner drugstore, I found a host of sizes, shapes and flavors of gloss, none of them more than $4. Wands and pots are the most prevalent, but more clever and useful are products in ChapStick-like tubes that are plenty glossy, with just enough pigment to eradicate pallor. The caramel-scented Lil’ Slixx from Naturistics actually smells good, ditto for Bonne Bell’s Dr Pepper and Root Beer Float Lip Smackers (but stay away from the Strawberry Kiwi). For clear, shiny gloss, with or without glitter (I prefer with, why not?), a roll-on is by far the best, and I recently picked one up at Rite Aid for less than $2 from a company called Sweet Georgia Brown. It fits in the pocket of tight jeans and has only a hint of lime to it. I also grabbed a pot of dense, crayon blue- and-red swirled gloss made by Bon Bons, spurred by morbid curiosity and the 99-cent price. To my surprise, this one ended up being an evening favorite. Mixed together, the red and blue blend effortlessly into purple, and somehow it never looks streaky or wears badly, though it only stays on for about 15 minutes.
Which is fine. The noncommittal aspect of lip gloss is one of its pleasures. Gloss is, essentially, the makeup equivalent of blue jeans--perfect for those casual, transitional parts of life that take up the slack between the high points. In my daily routine, there’s far more slack time than lipstick-worthy drama, so lip gloss gets a lot of playtime. Of all the lip glosses I’ve tried, both haute and bas, the one I wear the most is Cover Girl’s LipSlicks in Hint of Mauve, which set me back about $2.69. It’s the same color as my lips, just a shade more intense. The texture is light and pleasant and the sheen is perfect, and it has only a vague “cosmetics” odor, the remembered scent of my grandmother’s makeup kit--a smell that since the dress-up days has always made me feel grown-up and pulled together. Best of all, it comes in a regular lipstick tube, which means that you can slick it on at a stoplight. Or you can also, in good conscience, pull out a jeweled compact with a flourish and paint it on in the dining room of the Beverly Wilshire.
