Most of these companies are marketed toward women. More than eyeshadow or waist trainers, or whisks, they sell a dream. You take the tired, overworked mom, who misses her kids, and tell her that she can work from home just a few hours a week and support her family. Be your own boss! Make your own schedule! Work when you want to! And girl, I get it. We've all been there. I myself have bought in more than once. After being dragged to one party I literally cried- sobbed- thinking about how I was going to make all this money and never miss another moment of my kids' lives. But, alas, the dust settles, and for every woman driving the pink cadillac, there are a hundred more with dusty boxes of unsold dreams in her basement.
Which is to say, I'm wary of MLM products. I don't like being sold to anyway, and now, thanks to the internet, we can all be invited daily to "parties" (another thing I'm guilty of- I've invited you before, I admit it) and buy a little piece of the American Dream. Because I talk so much about makeup, which I genuinely love, I get messages literally every single day, sometimes multiple times a day, about makeup and skin care companies. Last year it was Younique and this year its Lipsense.
I'm not hyperlinking anything, because I know you know what I'm talking about. If you are a woman between ages 13 and death, you have been invited to try it. I avoided it, like the plague, for a long time. I have a really strong aversion to being sold to, and Lipsense is pretty damn pricey (it lasts all day! Its so good for you!) A color and a gloss (its a two part system, and you need both for it to work) will run you about $45 plus tax. Do you know how much lipstick I can buy for $45?? Additionally, when wearing Lipsense, you are really just supposed to ONLY wear Lipsense, as apparently, wearing other brands, will work against Lipsense's ultimate plan to change everything about how you wear lipstick. I can't. I can't even. So I buy two or three colors and have to toss out the other 200 tubes and never use all of those other beautiful colors again. I can't. I can't even think about it. So up until now, I've been pretty firm in the "no" category.
I work for the same company as my mom, albeit in different departments, and I got a message early this morning that another woman in her department had some Lipsense and did I want to try it. I could hardly contain my eyeroll, when mom added that she wasn't selling it, she just bought some, and if we wanted to try it out, we could. Though I am somewhat new to the company, my mom has been there over a decade, and the other ladies in the accounting department with her have known me just as long. So, I didn't feel like I was putting on the lipstick of a random stranger.
I thought to myself, "what the hell?" Risk free trials and money back guarantees do nothing for me, but this seemed like a safe enough bet. And maybe I was wrong all this time and Lipsense really is life changing. And I figured if nothing else, I could review it and put it on the internet, because all of the review seem to be from people selling it, and so they have a stake it how its portrayed. I don't sell it. I have no stake whatsoever, and so whether you buy a hundred tubes or never touch the stuff will literally make 0.0% difference in my life. So you can be sure its a honest review, because I have no reason to care one way or the other.
The first time I encountered a seller of the Lipsense, I was totally overwhelmed by her. She raved about how Lipsense was going to "heal" my lips. Which, lets stop here for a second. Its lipstick, not Jesus. No one is getting healed. So for months after, any time anyone brought it up, I suddenly discovered something fascinating happening in the other room. But I promise you that I went in to today with an open mind. I know everything you've read up until now sounds like I am going to just shit all over it, but I promise, its very unbiased.
This particular co-worker had purchased the colors "Persimmon" and "Dawn Rising."
For my first nice comment I will say that I liked both of these colors a lot. The top color, the Persimmon, is not quite as red as it seems in the picture, its more of an orange red, and Dawn Rising is a nude color with gold glitter in it. I like these colors very much. I decided to go with the Persimmon though, since red is super in my wheel house.
For the uninformed, to apply this product correctly, you first have to make sure your lips are clean. You apply a coat, let it dry (don't close your mouth) and repeat two or three more times. Seriously, don't close your mouth. Then you apply their gloss over top, which apparently, is the magic potion that makes everything stay. They have a glossy gloss and a matte gloss. Matte gloss is sort of an oxymoron, and I didn't try that one, but the basic idea is that it is a matte topcoat. Like nail polish.
So.
On went the first coat. This product is super super super watery and thin. Also, the #1 ingredient must be alcohol, because it stings a little and smells like alcohol. You have to hold your mouth open for it to dry, and if you make the mistake of closing your lips, be prepared to put a little work it to get them open again. That shit sticks.
Because, as I mentioned, its very thin, and watery, you need a few layers to really build color. I did three. More stinging. More drying. Pretty color though. You can, through the stinging, really feel the color taking hold on your lips. Lipsense did not come to play. Lipsense is the only lipstick I have ever tried that was a little bit painful to apply. I guess thats how you know its working.
Once it was dry, I applied the gloss ( I picked glossy, because I wanted to see how long it would stay that way) and I was able to close my mouth without worrying that I would never open it again. The gloss is still kind of tacky, but I wouldn't call it sticky. And it became less so as the day went on.
I forgot to add that before I put the gloss on, I put some Dawn Rising in the center of my lips, because I wanted to try and sort of blend the two colors into each other. Lipsense doesn't blend, which now that I think about it, makes sense, because its transfer proof. So its not going to move around. And because I just had a few little dabs on, you couldn't see it. So anyway, Persimmon, gloss, blah blah blah.
See? Pretty color.
So this was probably about 8:30 this morning. I will say that the gloss did feel moisturizing. It is not as moisturizing as Frog Prince which absolutely is the most moisturizing formula out there, but its not bad. After about two hours, I decided to see if the gloss is transfer proof like the color. It is not. The gloss does come off, you can see it here on my hand. Though again, in fairness, they never claimed the gloss would stay all day. I just wanted to see.
See that sparkly stuff in the middle? Thats the gloss. After lunch, I decided to do another round of pictures to see how this stuff was handling the test of time. This was probably around 1:30pm.
The gloss is definitely gone, but we're talking 5+ hours here, so thats pretty impressive. The color hasn't really budged. And it really is transfer proof. I tried wiping it on napkins, with wet lips, and there wasn't even a hint of a transfer. Its really on there. I did take this really charming attractive picture to show how it was fading at the corners of my mouth a little bit, but even that wasn't horrible.
So, with the gloss gone, the moisture factor goes way down. The color is, at its core, a liquid lip, and long lasting liquid lips are not moisturizing. They're dry. They have to be or they'd wipe off. So I'm not bothered by that. I just didn't want anyone to think that without the gloss you'd still have moisturized lips all day. You won't. I mean, you could actually buy the gloss, unlike my cheap ass, and that would solve that problem, but without the gloss, it feels like a dry liquid lip.
The current time is 7:42pm central time. I've eaten dinner and here are the last round of pictures, 11 hours and some change after applying the product.
I feel like its a tiny bit more streaky than it looks in the pictures, but here we are, nearly 12 hours later, and its holding strong. So, I will say, thats impressive. I mean, is lipstick that wears off really the scourge of our lifetime? Probably not. Its not like I would have gotten my PhD, but I just didn't have the time because I was re-applying lipstick. Its not that serious. By the same token though, the tube probably would last a really long time, because you really don't have to re-apply the color.
Also, 11+ hours later, I finally spotted that dot of Dawn Rising that I tried to blend this morning:
You're welcome, by the way, for that up the nose shot. I've never looked sexier.
Final Thoughts with Dr. Drew:
Its not bad. It does stay on. They do seem to have a nice range of pretty colors. You have to buy the gloss along wit the color and the set seems to run $45 from what I can tell. They also sell a remover, but I have no idea how much that is. According to Amazon, the remover is about $10, but take that with a grain of salt. I do not have access to any such remover, so here's hoping coconut oil does the trick.
Would I buy it? Probably not. I am suuuuuper cheap, and so the thought of regularly buying lipstick in this price point gives me panic hives. If this stuff is your jam though, God bless. It is absolutely a quality product. It does last a bit longer than Lip Whips which up until now were the longest wearing, hardest to remove formula that I'd ever tried. Lip Whips are still in the luxury price point, but they are quite a bit cheaper. So it really just depends on what is most important to you. Far be it from me to tell anyone how to spend their money. Some people really love this stuff, and if thats you, I say huzzah. I will just be over here in the corner, re-applying my $5 Colourpop.
