The Red Lip Diaries: B. Matte Red Lipsticks in Isabella, Dita, Suki & Alexa

Isabella, Dita, Suki, Alexa 

Isabella, Dita, Suki, Alexa

Isabella

Dita

Suki

Alexa

I do love a bit of B. The inexpensive, accessible yet high quality products are one of the best things to land at Superdrug in recent years, alongside the rather fabulous Makeup Revolution range.  B's newest lipsticks are super matte, high pigmentation, and every single shade available is red - perfect.

Texture wise, the lipsticks are a little bit waxy and draggy until they warm up, and even when they do they never quite become buttery and glide-y.  The draggyness doesn't matter too much, though, because the pigmentation is so high - this is easily one of the most high pigment high street lipsticks I've tried, particularly in such a matte finish.

They do feel a little tight and heavy on the lips, nothing too bad but you'll definitely know you're wearing them.  Wear time is pretty damn good - four hours before the colour faded, and even then it didn't fade too much, just wore down to a slightly more stainy effect.  Shade wise, Isabella is a fairly orange red; Dita is a slightly pinky red; Suki is a true blue based red; and Alexa is a slightly more wine red.

So far, so good, right?  This is where it goes wrong, sadly.  Whilst the lipsticks themselves are pretty damn good for their tiny £7.99 price tag, the packaging is awful.  The tubes are the kind where the cap is the entire height of the lipstick, and the bullet clicks into place inside the cap rather than screwing in.  This is all well and good, but the lipsticks started failing to click into the caps whilst I was swatching them, which meant that my swatching session finished with one of the lipsticks doing a good imitation of being a torpedo launched from a tube, and falling straight to the floor.  As a result I wouldn't trust these things in my handbag - the chances of getting red lipstick everywhere is just too high.

All in all, then, a good product spoiled by bad packaging.  Boo.

Disclosure:  PR samples

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