My editor called. “Oi, Betts,” quoth the Oracle. “You always wear red lipstick, right?” “No,” I sighed. “Dita Von Teese always wears red lipstick. I never wear lipstick; neither do I take my kit off in giant martini glasses. Well, not often.” Still, a week is a long time in slap, and suddenly I’m old enough and ugly enough to be feeling the need.
My lips used to be plump, pillowy, bruise-pink phenomena, such that I would routinely be accused of sporting lipstick when I wasn’t. I would also be condemned for pouting. I wasn’t; they were just there. A lover once … Actually, let’s leave that one, suffice to say that I viewed lipstick as a device that marred rather than augmented. I did have a thing, and that thing was blusher – specifically, too much of it. Pink cheeks spelt vivacity, a beguilingly post-coital flush, and I wasn’t happy until I was as rouged as an 18th-century fop or fairground Aunt Sally. Make-up artists tutted; straight men expressed repulsion; my hairdresser would go at my face with a tissue, but faux rosiness brought me joy.
Still – as no less an authority than one G. Clooney has established – every ten years, you age ten years; what the French refer to as un coup de vieux. It’s happened, I’m old, and hyper-blush makes me look all care in the community. Meanwhile, my lips have deflated, my colour drained and suddenly I’m craving the magic bullet. Other women experience an analogous volte-face. One minute they’ll be smoky-eyed to the max; the next, Nature has bestowed an equally smoky under-eye and the two are competing. One day, bronzer makes you look like a Twenties Coco Chanel; the next, Coco Chanel now.
Re lipstick, for all that guff about it taking a lifetime to find your colour, texture, soul lip, etc etc, it’s a cinch. Forget reds, nudes, what’s fashionable, or the old “one shade darker than your natural tone” chestnut. What is required in this instance is a hue that makes your eye colour pop and your skin gleam – not merely a fit, but a kapow. This will be a shade that is a demonically supra-real version of your pout. Accordingly, if you’re an olive-skinned gal who suits corals, think noxious satsuma or blood-orange red. Tom Ford, Charlotte Tilbury, Topshop, Kate Moss for Rimmel and the Body Shop all pigment with aplomb.
My black-pink lips/ghoulish skin/green eyes with purple ring combo (truly, I should have been staked at birth) means lipstick choices have boiled down to two absolute corkers. First, Charlotte Tilbury Matte Revolution Lipstick in Glastonberry (£23; charlottetilbury.com): a bruise-blue-pink, retro, yet “f*** you” humdinger, in a formula combining new-broom luminosity with old-school drag. Second, Topshop Lips in The Damned (£8; topshop.com): a lurid purple pink, wearing away to a fetching stain. Nars boasts a similar shade of the same name. This is clearly what damnation looks like – ravishing.
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Lesley Thomas is away