How Lipstick Queen Saint Rouge Made Hell Freeze Over

Do any of you remember that Lipstick Queen review I did earlier this year? If you don't remember it or haven't read it, you should probably get on that, just because. If you did read it and you do remember it, I'm pretty impressed...but since the folks who read it have probably already forgotten my little rant about sheer, "moisturizing" lipsticks anyway, here's a quote:

I do not like moisturizing lipsticks. I think moisturizing lipsticks are bullcrap. In my experience, they're too oily, they slide all over my lips, they lack pigment, and they barely last past an hour. I do not need my lipstick to be moisturizing. If I want my lips to be moisturized, I'll use lip balm. End of story. [...] I also tend to shy away from sheer lipsticks and go for more opaque formulas...

I want my lipsticks opaque and satin-or-matte; to Hell with "sheer and glossy"! So you can just imagine my surprise when a friend sent me a cut-up tube of Lipstick Queen Saint Rouge as a swap extra. I was all, "Girl, don't you know me?!" And I swatched it, but otherwise ignored it for a few months.

And then this happened.

SNOW! I get that I'm from Pennsylvania, so my response to the first snow of the year is supposed to be a lot of grumbling and whining. My actual response?

I'm not exaggerating. I woke up, looked out my window, saw snow, and immediately shouted, "WHAT'S THIS? WHAT'S THIS?!" My cat was not amused.

Point is, as soon as fall starts fading in to winter, I whip out the golds and reds. And if I'm going to wear a bunch of gold eyeshadow, I'm not going to wear a full-on red lip--it's just overwhelming on my face. That means I need something a little less intense.

Enter Lipstick Queen Saint Rouge.

This particular formulation is described as being 10 percent pigment versus the Sinner line's 90 percent. This means it's got a lot more of the base ingredients and emollients in it, so it's no real shock that the Saint lipsticks are touted as "sheer" and "moisturizing"...but the "long-wearing" claim threw me a bit. It's been my experience that anything marketed as sheer and moisturizing will slide all over the place and/or last less than an hour on my mouth. Not a bad thing for some people, but definitely not to my taste, and most certainly not a sign of something long-wearing.

But the Lipstick Queen Saints are long-wearing, at least as far as light-and-glossy formulations go. While the shine will fade from my lips after an hour, the actual color stays for a good 3-4 hours, provided I'm not eating anything too greasy or oily. And there's a decent amount of pigment in these puppies: they're not opaque by any means, but they also don't go completely clear on my lips the way most sheer lipsticks do.

I will quibble with the "moisturizing" claim. As I've already mentioned, I could give two shits if my lipstick is moisturizing--that's what a balm is for--but I actually found this formulation to be the tiniest bit drying. To be fair, this was only after I'd applied the lipstick 2 or 3 times throughout an 8 hour work day. But I have zero dryness problems with Jean Queen or my Sinner lipsticks, so it's a bit boggling that the so-called "moisturizing" formula is the one that can parch my lips if I'm not careful.


Still, it's a wonderful formula, wonderful enough to make me go against my creed...and buy a sheer lipstick. I was actually planning on picking up Saint Pinky Nude, and I'm more than a little miffed that it's suddenly out of stock at Nordies. I'M HAVING A LIPSTICK EPIPHANY, PEOPLE, STOP INTERRUPTING ME!

RATING: 4 out of 5

Available at Nordstrom.

NOTE: the final photo in this review is possibly the best representation of Saint Rouge's color.