How a lipstick is poured in our Andheri lab

Every Lalima lipstick is made in batches of about 2,000 units in our small lab in Andheri East. Farida, our chemist, and three technicians run each batch over two days.

The first day is for colour. Pigments arrive as fine powders: iron oxides for browns and earthy reds, and approved lake colours for brighter shades. They are weighed to a tenth of a gram and mixed into castor oil, then passed through a three-roll mill several times until no grains can be felt between the fingers. This colour paste is what decides the shade, and it is checked against a master swatch under daylight lamps before anything else is added.

On the second day, waxes and oils are melted together in a steel vessel at about 85 degrees. Candelilla and carnauba waxes give the bullet its structure, while oils and butters make it glide. The colour paste goes in, followed by a little vitamin E. The mix is stirred slowly for 40 minutes so no air bubbles form.

The hot mixture is poured into aluminium moulds, cooled for 20 minutes, and the bullets are pushed up into their cases by hand. A quick pass over a small flame gives the surface its shine. Every batch is then swatched on two of our team members with different skin tones and compared with the approved shade before it is packed. If a batch looks even slightly off, it is held back and remade. Each case carries a batch code, so we can trace any lipstick back to the day it was poured.