Jungle Red

I've been obsessed with red lipstick of late. Wearing the perfect shade, texture, look and price, to be precise. When one says 'red lipstick' many, and including myself, will say or think of the movies, tumbling waves of blonde or raven hair, Hollywood and the perfectly applied, over the top, dramatic paint job. But when you think about wearing it yourself...not so eager.
However, recently I've started to hanker after the other kind of red lips. Smudged, slept in and bleeding, without the shine or the gloss. The one where it looks like you were born with it...however unnaturally red.

These lips, seen mostly on the French rather than the American woman (I see smudged lips, eyes and lives as a more French idealism symbolised than the US mass gloss), with a cigarette between them-be it plump, thin or hiding a gap tooth-and not giving a damn. For me that's the ultimate red lips, lips with a life not a photo shoot. Let's face it, once you have the smudgy red puckers, the act of kissing and being kissed will not only be insinuated but encouraged, making lips sexy and raw.

The red lips hold a sign of freedom-from norms and societal code of behaviour. Women who can wear red are women who can get away with it, and they can get away with it because they don't care. Red lips thus shows a carefree side-but only when worn smudged mind. Otherwise how high maintenance would the perfectly lined and filed and twice blotted before glossed would the other kind be? It's the equivalent of comparing Jane Birkin to Grace Kelly or Julie Christie to Jackie O...all women are gorgeous but one kind looks like sex, whilst the other is having it. One has to read Jackie O's "sex makes the clothes crumple" quote to know what I mean.

Either way, today I've found my smudgy red lips courtesy of Shu Uemera. I have to admit, I had my heart set on Jungle Red by Nars, but apparently there quite a few smudgy lips wearers out there in London (quite satisfied and simultaneously bummed with this knowledge that it has sold out-funny how a tube of red lippie can affect a girl so). So I venture forth and find myself in another extortionist beauty department of an even more so extortionist but undeniably desirable department store. At last RD134 screams at me: "own me!" And I do just that. I am now quite unsafe in the knowledge that I look good, especially as it looks like I've just enjoyed a steamy snog-a-thon behind the bookshelves.