The Quickest of quick fixes is lip balm and a bit of pencil.
My lip-line vanished. What was once a crisp line, poetically called “the vermillion border”, is now blurry and threatening to disappear altogether. Mother Nature pulled a fast one and I am exasperated and ragey (futile I know). She’s already taken the colour from my hair, brows, eyes and cheeks so I permanently appear cadaverous and like a third-generation photocopy of my former self.
I do miss having a visibly defined mouth, even now while stuck at home. (You never know when you might catch your reflection in the tea kettle.) Sure, full-on red lipstick solves the problem, but most days I don’t want to haul out the whole makeup kit.
Retracing the still-faint lip line with a pinky-nude (or nudy-pink) pencil and then applying lip balm on top is the quickest of quick fixes and the effect is subtle, but sharpens everything. Because there is nothing funnier than when a man says “I like how you look with no makeup.”
(Products)
Lip pencils, from top: Charlotte Tilbury Lip Cheat in Pillow Talk ($27 CAN.) The ultimate YLBB (your lips but better) colour. It also comes in two darker shades: Pillow Talk Medium and Pillow Talk Intense so everyone can play. 19/99 Beauty Precision Colour Pencil in Neutra ($26 CAN). This new Canadian beauty line is spare and fantastic. More on them really soon. And finally, a quality drugstore find: NYX Extreme Colour Lip Liner in Bedrose ($10 CAN), the perfect almost-plum pink.
Balm: Burts Bees Moisturizing Lip Balm in Pomegranate ($6 CAN). It’s barely red, but just red enough and is a necessity in each pocket and beside each chair in the house. (And in each purse. Remember purses?)