Matte liquid or satin bullet: which lipstick for your day
How the two formulas feel, how long they last and how to apply each one so it looks even, not patchy.
How we test a new shade
Twelve skin tones, three lighting conditions and a lot of rejected reds.
Every Lalima shade goes through the same test before it launches, and many do not pass.
It starts in the lab, where our chemist makes small batches of a new colour, usually five or six variations of the same idea. A red might be made slightly warmer, slightly cooler, deeper or more sheer.
Each variation is then swatched on our panel of 12 women with skin tones from fair to very deep, chosen to reflect the customers who write to us. We photograph the swatches on arms and on lips in daylight by a window, under warm indoor light, and under the white tube light of an office.
The question we ask is simple: does this shade look good on at least nine of the 12? If a red looks bright on fair skin but disappears on deep skin, we go back to the lab. Our true red, Sindoori, took seven rounds.
Once a shade passes, we run a wear test: four hours of normal life, a meal and a cup of tea. Only then does it go to production, and the panel photographs become the swatches you see on our site.
