Red lipstick is my greatest beauty love. Foundation, eyeshadow, and mascara will come and go, but a rouge lip is forever. As someone who suffers from crippling laziness, removing mascara is my number one most hated beauty chore, and, as such, I am rarely inclined to dress my lashes in it of a morning. Heck, I can barely even muster up the energy to put on mascara to head out of an evening these days, such is the severity of my slothfulness. This move away from eye makeup has seen a marked upturn in the frequency with which I add spice to an otherwise beige canvas (read: my face) by way of a red lip. 

My lips and lipstick, though? They don’t get along so well. The term “star-crossed lovers” springs to mind when describing their relationship. If my lips were a Gemini, most lipsticks would be a Virgo or a Pisces, which, for anyone with the slightest interest in zodiac signs would know, is a woefully incompatible combo. Perpetually dry, oftentimes chapped, my lips need all the TLC they can get, and I’ve found that lipstick generally isn’t the product for the job. That is, until Yves Saint Laurent’s Rouge Pur Couture in 1 Le Rouge came knocking at my beauty cabinet’s door.

Rouge Pur Couture is creamy, incredibly pigmented, and very, very moisturising. It slides onto my lips as smoothly as Craig David* would into your DMs, and as beautifully as Alessandra Ambrosio would down a Victoria’s Secret runway. The colour is the perfect shade of red (not too bright, not too deep) and makes my lips look satisfyingly plump, instead of drying them out. It works with my go-to primer, MAC’s Prep + Prime Lip, to nourish TF out of my lips, like Eat Pray Love might your soul. It’s akin to cracking open a set of fresh satin sheets and rolling around in them for the night. It’s my new BFF. And if you too suffer from impossibly dry lips, it will no doubt be yours, too.

*The fact that Craig David is the only smooth-talking artist I could think of makes me feel very old and irrelevant.

Words, Madeleine Woon.