Best Lipsticks ever

Before this year I last wore lipstick when I was about 17. In between then and now I’ve worked my way through every lip balm possible, from Elizabeth Arden Eight Hour Cream to Burt’s Bees chapstick but I never, ever wore lipstick. Back in sixth form, I favoured a browny red lip crayon for everyday wear and a glossier black cherry shade from L’Oreal for parties. Both looked pretty awful but I persisted with them, because I thought lipstick would make me look more grown up and frankly, sexier. In fact, a painted mouth can look quite weird on a young woman, but now that I’m 35 I wanted to try it again.

It turns out, that if you’re self-conscious about wearing lipstick but want to give it a crack, Jean Queen from Lipstick Queen is the most brilliant gateway drug. It’s a pink lipstick that suits most skin tones (I’ve got pale olive skin but one of my friends has Celtic colouring and bought it too after seeing it on me). It was designed very specifically to be worn with jeans – the pink shade is supposed to complement the blue in denim and it’s also got a very slight gloss which allegedly balances out the mattness of denim. Either way, it somehow just makes you look ‘better’ (more awake, more pulled together) with barely any faff. Even my mother, a total cosmetics refusenik, asked me where it was from. There’s also something incredibly liberating about make up that can be worn independently of any other cosmetics and this subtle lipstick can happily be worn with a bare face.

I’m now on my third Jean Queen lipstick but have also bought Medieval, a kind of ‘starter’ red lipstick by the same brand. All of the Lipstick Queen lipsticks I’ve tried are very, very good. The colours are good, the formulations are moisturising, and also (and this isn’t irrelevant) the packaging is lovely.

My latest Lipstick Queen purchase is from the Silver Screen collection and is called Stella! They had me with the name really, which is a reference to Marlon Brando’s character screaming at his wife in one of my favourite films, A Streetcar Named Desire. The actual lipstick is a kind of light purple shade and as it turns out, it’s a lighter, more modern version of the purple lipstick I was once so fond of. I won’t be wearing it with hotpants and knee high boots this time round though.

Where: Available at John Lewis

Price: From £18

Website: Lipstick Queen at John Lewis

This article originally appeared on a-littlebird.com.