Thursday 25 December 2014

The worst lipsticks of the year: Topshop Lip Bullets in Wine Gum, Motel and Get Me Bodied review & swatches


Today I'm going to write about the major make-up fail of the month. I'm kicking myself in the butt because I broke my golden rule never to buy clothes chain store make-up and secondly I was once again fooled by the opinions of British beauty bloggers who are obviously crypto-sponsored by their native brands and sometimes rave about products which definitely aren't worth the hype.  What I'm complaining about is not a question of my personal preference or inappropriate shade description but simply the quality of the product which is so bad that it cannot serve anybody's purpose and certainly doesn't deserve a recommendation.     


When I saw that feelunique.com now stock Topshop products I just couldn't resist trying out products I'd heard so much of and which had been inaccessible for me for quite a while. From the wide selection of products on offer only lipsticks called my fancy or seemed something that would suit my taste and skin type. I picked 3 mini-size items cause I need more lipsticks like a bullet in my head and not much money would be wasted in case I didn't like them. 


They arrived a couple of days later, the feelunique service being as excellent as ever, gorgeously packed in a classy cardboard box and a pyramid trinket shape, looking absolutely stunning at first sight. The packaging of the Lip Bullets themselves was also both fun and very good quality sturdy plastic with nicely designed product name on its side.


The first set contained 2 Lip Bullets, one in the shade called Wine Gum and the other one Motel.
Wine Gum is a very dark wine colour, much darker than it looks in the bullet. It's a supervampy blackened shade that is actually quite unique.
Motel is a warm-toned neutral nude, kind of toffee-peanut butter shade which is pretty nice for day wear. 

The problem lies not in the shades themselves, but in disastrous quality of the lipsticks.They have a kind of weird consistency which melts upon contact with the lips and keeps moving around dangerously close to smudging and feathering. Motel applies decently, but Wine Gum holds all records for patchiness, which is particularly annoying in when using a dark lipstick like this. 
The worst thing is that there's something gritty about the formula, as if some kind of flour was or powder was one of the ingredients, when it gets into your mouth it feels like small particles of sand on your teeth.
In spite of their semi-matte finish, the lipsticks don't last long, even over a lip pencil, and they tend to fade unevenly ( especially the dark one). 
They dry out my nourished and groomed lips, giving them dry pathes and causing skin to peel.  
Also the transparent cap cracked after a couple of times I used the product. 

Generally, I think anyone raving about these is either insane or dishonest cause there's absolutely nothing good about these.


Another one, which came locked in a transparent pyramid, is their Matte Lip Bullet. This one is slightly better, but still not great at all.
The shade Get Me Bodied is similar to Wine Gum, but not as dark. When applied sheer, possibly just patted on with my fingers, it looks like a deep berry shade, which is actually quite pretty. 
Unfortunately, this lipstick is very hard to apply evenly, it accentuates all drier areas and gathers in blackened patches everywhere when the skin is dry or peeling. When patted on it feels very dry and makes my lips appear parched, even though they normally aren't, so a lip balm underneath is a must if you don't want your lips turned into Sahara desert.
I like its matte finish and the shade, but there are so many better performers, both drugstore and high-end that I see no point struggling with this one.


Below you can see how similar Wine Gum (left) and Get Me Bodied (right) are. 


6 comments:

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    1. I hope my hopnest voice will save somebody some money!

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  2. I actually bought wine gum after the rave review on makeupandbeautyblog.co, and I love it, a bit difficult to apply as the shade is so dark you need major precision but mine is creamy and wears really well for a dark matte. It settles into lip lines after it starts to wear off but not to an obscene degree and all dark matte or semmi mattes do that to me in a big way so the wine gum is way tolerable. doesn't dry my lips either. I actually found this post looking for a swatch of the complete line cause i kind of want another one... (I'm looking for Walkyrie dupes since Nars discontinued it before I could get my hands on it.
    Could it be that you got a defective product? (Also, primer makes a massive difference with this one).

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    1. I must admit this never occured to me, but now that you say yours is perfectly fine a seed of doubt has been planted in my head. Perhaps I got some bad batch, that would explain thungs a lot. My Wine gum has already landed in the bin, so I can't test it over primer, but no matter how much a primer can improve the overall performance, it cannot do away with this horrible gritty formula.

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  3. Get Me Bodied is actually one of my favorite lipsticks of all time (easily in my top five, and I have at least 60-65). I find that it applies evenly, lasts quite a while, and doesn't dry out my sensitive lips. I have the full-sized version, though, and I wonder if the mini version is formulated differently. I also have the mini Motel and I don't think it's bad at all, but I remember swatching Wine Gum in the store and thinking it looked very streaky and uneven, as dark lipsticks so often are.

    Your honest review is appreciated, in any case: I get just as annoyed as you do with bloggers who seem to be sponsored by the brands they rave about. It's good to have a variety of opinions in the beauty blogosphere!

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    1. I feel I expected god knows what of this lipstick and here lies the source of my disappointment ;)

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