A Nude Lip Good Enough to Be an EIC Must-Have
Here at T&C, we pride ourselves on our discerning eye for quality. As a result, our editors know the secrets to finding the best products on the market, whether it's a statement lipstick that doesn't quit, the perfect pair of gold hoops, the most comfortable and stylish mules, chic and functional barware, or the tech devices that will improve your day-to-day life. With T&C Tried & True, our editors will give you an inside look at the pieces they simply cannot live without.
They say it’s not where you started but where you end up. So let’s begin with the teal eyeliner. It is in a metal shopping basket in the hands of a high school girl roaming the beauty aisles of Century 21, 86th Street, Bay Ridge Brooklyn. The eyeliner is by Nat Robbins, as is the deep amethyst mascara next to it. Also there: Stiff Stuff HairSpray, Sebastian Shaper, L’Oreal Bronze Coin blush, Guerlain Terracotta, Poison, or maybe Giorgio, or could be Bijan. What’s missing: Understatement? Discretion? Subtlety? Also, lipstick.
For that you see, we must travel further afield through the wilds of the Belt Parkway to an emporium known as Caesars Bay Bazaar. It billed itself as a cross between a flea market and a department store and its legend was cemented by the fact that my friends Laura and Alyssa shopped there. They were wordlier types. They went to sleepaway camp. They also came to school in Naf Naf jumpsuits and EJ socks and ID shirts with Deguy jeans. Their skirt sets were Kikit. And their lipstick a mysterious confection that went by number only. It was called 44. “44” was a glorious and goopy opalescent pink that managed to stay on until at least fourth period. We all wore it consistently until junior year. By then, the teased bangs had begun to soften and the Benetton sweaters had been replaced by Tweeds blazers and matching sets from the Spiegel catalogue. I abandoned the teal eyeliner for a soft brown and trips to Caesars Bay started to feel like a burden, what with all the Sweet 16’s we had to go to at Pastels nightclub.
But that pale pink glossiness proved harder to abandon. I have been searching for that hint of a lip ever since. Every beauty editor I have ever met has tried to get me to go darker—a Bordeaux? A cherry stain?—but even in my teased bangs and dancing to Freestyle days I knew what I wanted, what I was really after in life: a subtle lip. You can hear the longing for it each time I reach the beauty counter. I no longer want goopy, and I don’t really love opalescence (though Bobbi Brown Lilac Sugar can be great in the summer with a bit of a tan). My search history is consistent: “Do you have a pinky-brownish gloss that stays on?” And I am adamant on all counts, dismissing the results that do not deliver. Because, in my pinky-brownish lip gloss odyssey experience, this triptych is harder to realize than you might imagine.
I don’t want too pink, because it makes me feel too made up, and I don’t want too brown because it makes me look too pale, and I get resentful if I have to reapply too much. I also only want gloss. For reasons I can’t quite articulate-but am happy to explore with you if you wish- in the last decade or so I have all but abandoned traditional lipstick. Its time I think to come to the end of this Odyssey de Maquillage, to find out where we landed after our idyll on Caesars Bay.
We end up, it turns out, at the Chantecaille counter of Bergdorf Goodman or Saks, and sometimes the category vertical on Net a Porter, and we meet our pinky-brownish lip gloss with staying power, one that glides on as easily as our beloved 44 but has none of its 1980s era sparkly shine. They call this Penelope of makeup Suzy, and she is of the Chantecaille Matte Chic Liquid Lipstick line.
Suzy goes on like a gloss but is dry and, yes, very matte. The color is there but not there and makes me look a little tan even in winter, even in 2020. And I am so attached to the color and the formulation that even on the very occasional occasions where I let someone else do my makeup, I bring Suzy with me. “Can you use this lip color?” I ask. Sometimes I can sense them rolling their eyes wondering what this pinky-brownish lip gloss has that theirs do not, and almost all have been converted. Now of course comes the terror after the discovery of the lip gloss you have been searching for most of your life: what if they ever discontinued Suzy?. Caesar’s Bay Bazaar closed in 1995 and I still wish I had gone there one last time with Laura and Alyssa and stockpiled #44 and some “Brooklyn Girls Best in the World” sweatshirts. So let’s please, take care of Suzy. Do you really want me to have to go back to the days of teal eyeliner?
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