I’ve been testing out quite a few new luxury lipstick launches and a couple of them are really quite fabulous. Comfortable, creamy, immensely flattering lipsticks that manage to retain a real punch of colour and (at least in the case of the Becca lipsticks I’m about to show you) do a good job of staying put. The first new-ish launch that impressed me no end is the Becca Ultimate Lipstick Love range and the second, the Bobbi Brown Crushed Liquid Lipsticks.
I’m going to review the Bobbi Brown lipsticks separately because they are very different to the Becca ones – they’re liquid, for a start. But I also want the Ultimate Lipstick Loves to have their own dedicated post because there’s something rather clever about them that’s rather unique. (I think.)
The clever thing is that rather than having a mass of lipstick shades covering every possible colour on the colourwheel – pale peach to deepest mauve, pearlised beige to bright blue – the new Becca range concentrates on finding your perfect nude and your ideal red and – to help with this mission – categorises the 30 shades according to skin undertone. There are six cool-toned nudes, six warm-toned, six neutral nudes and then the same drill for the reds – six with a cool tone, six reds with a neutral tone and six with a warm.

So you work out your undertone (Becca advise that you’re a “cool” if you look best wearing white, a “warmR...