Lush Emotional Brilliance

Lush's new colour collection comes in the form of many identical dropper-bottles, reminiscent of an old apothecary shop or magician's store cupboard. Well, they look like dropper bottles, but they actually have flocked applicators and liquid liner brushes inside the lids. And rather than being an undifferentiated spectrum of colour, they're separated into cream eyeshadows, eyeliners and liquid lipsticks. Still a bit magic though.

Those who remember Lush's now-defunct cosmetic sister company B Never Too Busy to be Beautiful will spot similarities between the colour range here and the original B never line-up of cream colours for eyes and lips. The packaging is less pretty, but the bright, vibrant mix of mattes and shimmers is quite similar.

The idea of Emotional Brilliance, and the reason for the name, is that you pick the colours that speak to you on a particular day, based on your response to a wheel of colours. Each one represents a quality or emotion that you'll then possess through wearing it - like bravery, glamour, etc. The people at Lush are strong on the idea of people choosing and controlling their own look, rather than being swayed by fashion or told what to wear and how to wear it. For that reason, Lush won't be offering Emotional Brilliance makeovers in store.

I received 3 colours from the range - Fantasy, a true gold liquid eyeliner, Glamour, a baby-pink-verging-on-lilac liquid lipstick, and Perspective, a nice peachy nude liquid lipstick. Each one comes with a little note on an elastic band tied around the neck of the bottle, explaining the emotional benefits you can gain from the colour through the power of association (no further claims are made - these don't pretend to be able to alter your mood per se - they're more like a personal totem or lucky charm in makeup form).

All three shades are highly pigmented and offer vivid payoff. I tried using both the liquid lipsticks as blush and they blended well. Glamour - the lilac-pink - doesn't do me any favours as a lipstick but worked out really nicely on the cheeks, giving a cool, bright Posietint-style effect. (So yes, I can do it. Without looking like Barbie.)

Fantasy is a straight-up, old school liquid eyeliner. It has no fancy polymer pigments or stay-true super-waxes. It goes on smoothly and creates an opaque line. It will wash off with soap and water. It ticks all the boxes you'd expect a gold liquid eyeliner to tick. I'm not sure this is worth the £14.50 price tag, but it's definitely decent quality.

The liquid lipsticks on the other hand are quite unusual. Both of the colours I tried have a marvellously light, smooth feel on the lips. They feel moisturising without a hint of greasiness or tackiness, sheer out well and offer reasonable wear. They do bear a strong resemblance, formula-wise, to the B Never lip colours which came in a tube with a flocked wand (I've forgotten the exact product name, but I think it was a product that doubled as a blusher).

As I mentioned, the Glamour shade does not flatter me at all, but Perspective is a great my-lips-but-better shade on me, a creamy nude with just a hint of shimmer.

Finally, here's a full-face shot I'm calling "emotionally weird"... Barbie lips and one gold eye. Well, I guess it fits with the "not following fashion" ethos.

Emotional Brilliance colours cost £14.50 each. The full range is available now at Lush

Disclosure - PR sample