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Oh, the 90's trend. It's remarkable what a teenage socialite with a lip job can do to start the whole lip craze in the beauty world, causing my subscription box to overflow with posts aspiring to recreate the look. Now, unlike 95 % of the beauty community, I am not a fan of the trend (nor of the teenager in question). At least of the purple toned natural lip colours such as this one. But that doesn't mean I don't like it on other people and for the sake of experiment as well as let call it "to blend in", I gave it a shot with possibly the cheapest choice out there - Satin Mauve lip liner.
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Satin Mauve is a medium mauve-taupe shade on me. It's a natural colour, almost like a very desaturated violet berry shade. If I use it lightly, it's close to my natural lip colour, but with a strong violet tone. This is the lip colour that when I put it on, I grunted when I looked in the mirror and thought, yeah this is not going to work. The purple-grey tone it has drains my face of colour and make me look too corpsy without ever being a pale nude shade. I've asked for a second and third opinion about this colour on me and they were very conflicting. I've heard the: "No. No, you can't wear this. This is just awful on you" and I also heard: "It's pretty. I like it. It's such a nice natural shade", which was followed by: "It's so much better than that harlot red you wear sometimes (for Slovene readers the word was "pocestniška". Some Slovene words just crack me up) *awkward cricket sound*. Lol. Yeah, we tend to be brutally honest in our family, but it works for us.
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This is of course the case of how it looks against my pale skin tone and I have no doubt that it looks far better on darker skin tones, but then again when I cousin tried it out on her warm NC20-25 complexion, she wasn't too thrilled about how it looks on its own either, but she has seen its potential as a base for other similar lip colours to give them that extra something. I actually like how this shade swatches on my hand, but for some reason it looks very different on the lips and just doesn't work for me (at least I think so).
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Though Essence lip liners are very popular mainly for being non-drying, I find their texture too soft and lipstick-like to be a good formula for a liner. The softness doesn't allow for actual precision, at least the sharp edges are hard to do, but as a lipstick alternative it works. And people are right, it doesn't dry out the lips, but it also smudges (like a creamy lipstick) and doesn't last long (one swipe and it's gone). This softness also means that the pencil needs to be sharpened very often, pretty much after every use, so if you plan to use it as an everyday shade, it won't last long.
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So, I gave it a try, but my skin tone dislikes such cool toned purplish shades. I think that for me it just should have some red in it. I heard Nadja from Memento Mori say that the newest liner from Essence's Long Lasting range in Lovely Frappuccino, looks very similar on the lips to the über hyped Mac's Soar and like a good blogger she even did a comparison on the lips. I've tried it in the shop and though the packaging is very deceivingly plain brown, it is indeed a lot more red than Satin Mauve. I'm also tempted by the shade called Yummy Berry after seeing these swatches on Breath of Colour blog (she has divine pictures, am I right?), I'm just not sure I'll like the texture.
Essence lip liners cost 1.19 € in Müller.
What do you think about this shade on me? Yay or nay? Have a great day!