A red lip is the perfect accessory for the holidays!
It’s bright, it’s fun and with one quick swipe can turn your look from boring to bold.
photo by Kelly Cappelli Makeup by Corinna Cooke
A well defined brow paired with a kick-ass red lip is classic.
It’s also a quick and easy look to pull off.
A red lip makes such a statement on it’s own that you can scale back the rest of your makeup, keeping the eye and cheek simple and letting the lip do all the work for you.
My favorite red lip look for the holiday season is a rich, matte lip paired with glowing, luminous skin.
Check out 6 of my favorite matte reds for the holidays:
The 6 Best Red Lips For The Holidays
Tatcha Kyoto Red is a geisha inspired red that is universally flattering – it looks great on everyone. And it packs a serious punch.
It’s a matte lip with a silk finish.
Tatcha Kyoto Red
Lipstick Queen Velvet Rope Matte Lipstick in Black Tie.
Nars Pure Matte Lips are super pigmented and very long wearing, which is ideal when you are going bold – you don’t want to be wearing a lipstick formula that requires a lot of maintenance and upkeep.
One of my all time favorite red lipsticks, Red Carpet Red hasn’t been around very long, but will become another of the iconic red lips. It’s wonderful.
Red can be overwhelming, but there are a few tricks to mastering it.
First up, if you don’t normally wear red, ease into it. Sometimes a red gloss can be a good stepping stone to get you used to such a strong color – you don’t need to launch straight into red in its boldest form.
Next, know which undertone is right for your skin.
image courtesy of en.paperblog.com
If you are fair skinned, try a blue based red.
If you have an olive complexion you will look better in an orange based fire engine red or a brick red.
If you are dark complected a deeper more burgundy based red will look amazing.
A true, movie star red (like Julie Hewett Rouge Noir) looks amazing on pretty much everyone.
The key to owning it in a red lip is to keep everything else simple.
Keep your foundation clean, accent your brows and keep your eye almost bare.
Be a little bit more specific with your application – red needs more definition. A messily applied beige is neither here nor there, but a messily applied red lust looks awful.
Cameron Diaz, jeans, white shirt and red lips
A final note: don’t save red lipstick for when you’re dressing up. It looks killer with jeans or cutoffs and a white shirt.
I was on NBC this morning doing a Fifty Shades Freed inspired Valentines Day makeup look.
Are you going to see the new Fifty Shades Freed movie? It will be in theaters on February 9th, but if you are in Arizona and would like to go to a private pre-screening of the movie Universal Pictures has given me 5 pairs of VIP Passes to give away here on the blog! You can see the details at the bottom of this post.
But let’s talk about Valentine’s makeup.
I’m going to let you in on a secret. Most men really don’t like a face full of makeup. If you spend forever perfecting your contour, whipping out the absolute most perfect winged liner ever, or blowing out the greatest smoky eye in the history of the world, your guy just won’t care! Men seldom go crazy over a big makeup. If nothing else it looks somewhat scary. The best way to super woo your man with your makeup is to scale it back. Choose glowing skin, keeping foundation to a minimum. Softly enhance your cheeks with a cream blush, gently accent your brows and keep eye makeup a little more neutral.
Valentine’s Day is the festival of smooching, so you should draw all the attention to your mouth. Make your lips the focus with a bold, sexy shade such as a red, cerise or fuchsia. Reds make you look a little wild, a little femme fatale. Just make sure you use a formula that isn’t glossy and doesn’t wind up all over your glass. Men don’t want that all over them so a big glossy lip tends to be the anti-kiss formula! Choose a hydrated matte or longer wear satin so that you don’t have to worry about it getting all over your teeth and you don’t have to keep checking in the mirror to make sure its still on.
As promised in the TV spot, here is a list of the products I used today along with affiliate links:
To Prep The Skin
Sonia Roselli Water Balm available here on Amazon.com This is my new favorite product. It is the perfect pre-makeup prep balm, keeping the skin gorgeously hydrated but not slippery, so makeup glides on but stays in place. The most important thing that you can do to keep your makeup looking beautiful is to get the hydration situation perfect before you put makeup on.
The Foundation
My favorite foundation is Makeup Forever HD Ultra Foundation. It is really concentrated, so you can get a flawless finish to the skin using only a tiny amount. This means that you don’t have a thick, caked on foundation, yet you can still get a lovely coverage. Makeup Forever HD Foundation is available here at Sephora
My model Angelina has fabulous brows, so I just added a little Anastasia Brow Definer to enhance them. I love the slanted angle of this pencil, and the colors are fabulous. You can get them here at Sephora.
I mixed a few different eye shadows together from my kit but I gave Angelina layers of Charlotte Tilbury Full Fat Lashes mascara topped off with some demi wispie lashes.
The Lips
If you are going to wear a matte lip it must be a hydrating matte, otherwise the lip will start to look dead. I love Charlotte Tilbury Matte Revolution lipsticks because they are super hydrating and keep the lip looking kissable, yet are also matte. The absolute perfect shades for Valentine’s Day are Matte Revolution, The Queen which is a cerise that reads like a pinky red and is madly sexy, or the ultimate red lip, Charlotte Tilbury Matte Revolution in Red Carpet Red. Red Carpet Red is an old Hollywood glamour red, and is just timeless.
In the Fifty Shades Freed movie Anastasia Grey wears a beautiful glowing skin, barely there makeup and a bold neutral lip. I prefer a little pop of color on the lip for Valentine’s.
If you would like to see a screening of Fifty Shades Freed before it opens to the public nationwide on February 9th, Universal Pictures has given me 5 pairs of VIP passes to giveaway. You can see details here, or just enter in the Rafflecopter widget below.
Enter to win a pair of VIP passes to a private screening of Fifty Shades Freed here: a Rafflecopter giveaway
This post contains affiliate links. See Disclosure Page to learn how this blog uses affiliate links
This is my new favorite product. It is the perfect pre-makeup prep balm, keeping the skin gorgeously hydrated but not slippery, so makeup glides on but stays in place. The most important thing that you can do to keep your makeup looking beautiful is to get the hydration situation perfect before you put makeup on.