was onto something... not the whole bringing baked goods to granny and dodging the wolf bit, but the wearing red thing. Ever since opting for a red Essie nail varnish shade called 'Forever Young', I've been a tad obsessed with the colour. This morning I pulled a Gwen Stefani and painted my lips in Estee Lauder's red lip gloss. I'm not talking subtle, I'm talking fire engine red – the shade that doesn't knock before entering, it just arrives.
There's nothing like blood red lips or nails that remind you of Dorothy's ruby red slippers, to put a Marilyn-inspired spring in your step. Like the little black dress, red is a classic – if an outfit's the sentence, then a slick of red gloss or a dash of crimson varnish, is the punctuation mark. Every few seasons red makes a comeback...
showing up on the glossy pages of my favourite mags, being given the stamp of approval by startlets during awards seasons and making its way into 'free gift with purchase' packs at make up counters.
showing up on the glossy pages of my favourite mags, being given the stamp of approval by startlets during awards seasons and making its way into 'free gift with purchase' packs at make up counters.
A quick google search (via www.mybbf.com) reveals that red lipstick really is nothing new... "it dates back to Egyptian times some 5,000 years ago, the Romans and Greeks were known to adorn their lips with a mixture of dye and pigments in an oil-wax base and even Cleopatra had lipstick made from crushed carmine beetles to give her a deep red pigment. But Queen Schub-ad used the earliest lipstick on record. She was a Sumerian queen that blended white lead with crushed red rocks to color her lips" (and I thought I was guilty of sometimes being a slave to fashion).
To get to the shade I meticulously painted my lips with this morning (crushing beetles and rocks doesn't float my boat), credit needs to be given to Guerlain for moving beyond 'pots of colour', and making the first bullet shape container in 1870 (the shade was called 'Ne m’oubliez pas'... translation: 'Don’t forget me'). Half a century later in the midst of WWII, Elizabeth Arden made the lipstick 'Montezuma Red' (try saying that quickly after a few glasses of merlot...). The red lipstick's shade was inspired by the hat tassels worn by Marine women and sparked a bit of a fashion revolution, blazing the trail for pop icon Madonna to proclaim MAC's 'Russian Red' her favorite color, and single-handedly turn it into a bestseller in 1986.
In the 1920s Flappers wore dark red lipstick to symbolise their independence, today red is still the colour of choice for confident women who can rock a boardroom as effortlessly as they can rock a pair of six-inch Louboutins. So, ladies, if your favourite nude lipgloss is drying up quicker than the ink on your latest credit card statement, and your french manicure is getting a bit predictable, I dare you to take a beauty-conscious leaf out of the history books paint your lips and fingertips a shade that matches your favourite glass of merlot.
Say Viva! to glam... get to a MAC counter and grab the "rockin red that has helped, and continues to raise tens of millions of dollars for the MAC AIDS Fund." And while you're at it check out Essie's Reds. With names like 'a list', 'fishnet stockings' and 'scarlett o'hara' you'll be seeing red (the good kind) in no time!
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