La Vie En Rouge

Visibility an ocean of new nudes and no make-up make-up looks, Autumn/Winter ’19 takes the statement lip up a notch by matting it down.

- Teh Sue May

There’s lipstick, and then there’s red lipstick. After all, when you hear the immortal words of Gabrielle Chanel telling you to “add more lipstick and attack”, you’re hardly picturing a peach or pink lip. The public’s long love affair with red lipstick is well-documented—born from the lips of the solo Sumerian ruler Queen Schub-ad, it leaped from lip to lip across empires and civilisations, making its way from Cleopatra’s vanity to Queen Elizabeth I portraits, painting the lips of suffragettes to Marilyn Monroe’s smirk, and today, seen on and tweeted about by congresswomen and sportswomen alike.

A firm feature on the catwalks, the velvety Autumn/Winter ’19 update to the power lip sees an added complexity to the age-old trend, drawing parallels to a renewed femininity in the age where women are no longer fighting for the right to rule, vote, or be seen as sexual.

LEADING WITH THE LIP