First and foremost, welcome to Big Diva! I hope you like it here and come back often!

Now let me tell you about today. Because today something happened that made me finally open this blog.

Today, I became a woman. But… you’ve always been a woman, right? I thought so too, yes. Okay, okay, first things first.

I have been looking for the perfect red lipstick for a long time. I have lipsticks in a myriad of colours, some of them indeed deep red. But they all matched my complexion perfectly. Which means, they were all in warm colours, usually in different kinds of berry tones. I have quite light skin (a friend of mine calls it Snow White skin) but it’s got a pinkish-golden hue in it. This means warm colours complement my skin tone, cold colours usually don’t. If, however, you’ve got pale skin with a pinkish-blueish hue in it, cold colours such as blues and certain yellows and greens will usually look quite good on you. But more about that in another post.

So, my dilemma was: all my lipsticks were berry shades. But I desperately wanted a kind of tomato/fire-engine red because at the moment, I’m just crazy about the styles of the 1940s and 1950s. This kind of colder red is quite femme fatale and neat but you have to get the perfect shade in order for it to do its magic. When you do, men will fawn over you and women will envy you for your boldness and cool sexiness.

I have known for a long time, deep down inside, that if I wanted that perfect cold red which would still match my complexion, I would need to get a Dior lipstick. Nobody does real reds like Dior. I’m not sure why that is, I just know that it’s like that.

So today, I finally went to a Dior counter and got myself the lipstick. Just one, the perfect one.

Hint

You can have many different coloured lipsticks – and in my humble opinion, you should! – but for every look you want to create there is usually one lipstick that will do. You just have to know where to look for it. Benefit Cosmetics for example rock the berry hues. Dior is great for true, cold reds. Chanel is great for orange tones and icy pink tones. Etc, etc. But you’ve come up with great colours by combining different lipsticks? I’m sure you have but I’m all about practicality. A look, no matter how sophisticated, has to withstand the test of your daily life and should not encumber you. If you mix lipsticks, you will have to carry all those you’ve used in your purse, so you can retain the same colour when you touch up. It’s much easier to just carry one, isn’t it?

So the Dior lipstick I bought was this: Rouge Diorific by Christian Dior, #013 Roulette Red. Once I’d chosen it, the nice Dior ladies plunked me down in their make-up chair in front of a light-bulbed mirror and put it on me. It’s great. It’s long-lasting but it doesn’t dry your lips out (that’s a very good sign right there). The texture is soft, it doesn’t smear easily and it even withstood me eating two sandwiches and drinking out of a bottle. It comes in the traditionally extravagant golden Dior packaging, which makes you feel like you just bought a little gem. It satisfies just about every need a woman shopping for make-up can have.

When I got home and took it out of the box, I knew it: I had just become a real woman. Something had been missing from my make-up life all those years and it was Rouge Diorific in Roulette Red. I used to think Dior was a brand for older ladies. Now I know it’s a brand for true ladies.

Extra lipstick advice

If you are working with deep and vibrant reds, I recommend using a lipstick brush to apply. The lipstick will really get in the creases of your lips and you can apply it more neatly, which is absolutely essential for popping reds.

Don’t wear vibrant reds with very tanned skin (unless you are actually black, in which case I say go for it). The golden-brown skin with vibrant or deep reds makes your face too dark. Use nude shades or light, sparkling colours when tanned. Lipsticks with a slight sparkle will make your lips look a bit fuller and they will complement (and compliment!) your tan by making it look more golden and glowing.

Don’t use very nude shades if you are pale. It will make your mouth disappear! Trust me, only skinny models with lots of airbrushing and professional lighting in their pictures truly look good with fully nude coloured lips. It doesn’t work well in real life.

Lipstick Must

Wear your lipstick with pride, especially if it’s a sizzling colour! There is nothing unsexier than someone who is ashamed of their lipstick. If you’re gonna go to all the trouble of beautifying yourself, you’ve got to make it count! So walk the walk, pout those lips and prepare to turn heads.

Now get crackin’ on painting those lips red! And after that, the town!

Anna

ps: so funny, when I went to get the link to the Dior site, I saw that they gave almost exactly the same application advice as I just did: use a brush! I have this retractable one from Sephora, which is good because that way, no powdery stuff can get on it.