Red lipstick can evoke a range of feelings. According to Google, red is associated with meanings of love, passion, desire, heat, longing, lust, sexuality, sensitivity, romance, joy, strength, leadership, courage, vigour, willpower, rage, anger, danger, malice, wrath, stress, action, vibrancy, radiance and determination.
Red lipstick can be tricky to buy but once you find the right shade for you, it soon becomes a regular in your makeup kit. There are so many shades to choose from, so where you do start?
· Decide what type of lippie you want. Do you want a solid lipstick, a stain or a gloss? Maybe you want all 3.
· Always, always, always wear a matching lip liner. The thing with applying and wearing red lipstick is that it needs to look perfect (don’t let this scare you off, it’s just like any makeup tip and trick, practice is the key). Lip liner helps create a perfect edge and stops your lipstick from bleeding. After you’ve applied your lip liner and lipstick, tidy up by applying more lip liner on top.
· Always carry your lip liner and lipstick in your bag for touch ups. Again, wearing red on the lip means it needs to look perfect. As it starts wearing away from your inner lip area, that sexy (or bold or courageous) look you were going for starts to lose its power.
· Fair skin: usually coral reds and reds with a pink undertone look great.
· Beige skin: true reds, classic reds and reds with berry tones suit this skin tone. Cherry reds work well too.
· Olive skin: similar to beige skin tones as well as reds that have a brick tone to them.
· Caramel skin: just about any red seems to work for this skin tone (classic reds, pink reds, cherry reds, orange reds, corals and so on).
· Darker skin: nothing too dark, go for burgundy and wine coloured tones and a classic/true red that errs on the darker side.
· If you are struggling to really see which red you think will work best for you, get onto your fave search engine and look at celebrities who have a similar skin tone to you and see what kind of reds they are wearing that look great and go from there.
· When it comes to testing reds (or any lipstick shade), putting stripes of lippie on your hand will not give you a clear indication if a shade of lipstick suits you or not. Using shop testers on your mouth is not a great idea, you don’t know whose used it before you. Better to do your research, purchase a shade and test it at home and risk not getting it quite right and trying again then potentially catching something.
· Now, pop that red lipstick on and go out show the world your sexy self, you are something to see!
