A Toxically Beautiful Kiss: Urban Decay Revolution Lipstick in Venom

Greetings from the side of a rather hopeful wizard, fellow rogues!

You know these old wizards. They’re nice chaps, really, but don’t always get out much – so when they hear of a quest involving kisses, even if this is in conjunction with the word ‘venomous’, they can’t go and investgate fast enough! Such was the case recently for our good friend Khael, who saw just such a posting on the local adventure board. Nothing would do but that we all pick up our stuff and go hiking over hill and dale to find…

Urban Decay’s Revolution Lipstick in Venom! 😀

You can imagine Khael’s disappointment when it turned out to be a lipstick artefact – he’d spent the whole trip dosing himself up on various antidotes, confident that they would aid him in receiving a magical, if toxic, kiss from some siren or other.  We all had a bit of a laugh, getting ready to head back to town and out of the way of the surprising number of poisonous scarab swarms that were haging around this lipstick, until I discovered something…

 

 

Khael, investigating the artefact’s stylish gunmetal casing. He hasn’t yet realised two things: there are poisonous scarabs on the other side, and there won’t be any siren-smooching…

 

I discovered that this artefact was more than just a wizard’s libido-based wild goose chase – it’s a truly fantastic, vampy, venomous berry purple lipstick that can hold its own with the very best in my not-inconsiderable collection of vampy purple lipsticks!

To start from the outside: the packaging for Urban Decay’s revamped line of Revolution lipsticks is really quite lovely. It’s an undulating gunmetal grey on the outside, and bears the signature UD violet colour on the inside. Now, I won’t lie, I’m a pretty devoted fan of Urban Decay’s offerings (particularly their eye pencils), and putting purple in anything is a good way to get me to look twice, but the packaging here is also eminently sturdy, operates smoothly and has a pleasingly luxurious weight to it in the hand. It’s the sort of packaging that is perfect for adventuring – it looks good in an understated way (as befits a rogue),  it’ll hold up to being dropped to the bottom of a dungeon, and in the event of an emergency, you can probably knock out a guard or goblin with it.

I’d also like to take this opportunity to give Urban Decay a rogueish hug, for making their products available to non-US customers at the normal price. Sure, you have to get it shipped, and there’s the exchange rate to think about, but that’s just part of living in a different country to where the products originate. They haven’t just opened stores here and marked everything up by 3x (have they, MAC, hmm?). Anyway, back to the review…

 

Having opened the artefact, Khael is starting to realise that the whole kissing thing may not be on the cards, unless he’s willing to put the listick on himself. More pressingly, the poisonous scarabs are making their way very purposefully to the edge of his robes…

 

The lipstick itself is in the flat-top chisel format, which I quite like – you can use the flat edge to fill in your lips, and the sharp edge to line them and even up the edges afterwards. I don’t find that this lipstick feathers at all throughout its very impressive 5-6 hour wear time on me, so I don’t use lipliner, but it’s nice to be able to do a precision job of applying it. And yes, you read that right. 5-6 hours. That’s truly epic by my standards, and Urban Decay gets a ‘You Rolled a 20! Award for Wear Time So Good It’s A Critical Hit’. This thing’ll have you vamping and venoming it up through a full temple-catacomb complex, no worries.

The colour is what I would call a berry violet (purple with strong berry red undertones), with very fine purple shimmer particles. The shimmer doesn’t translate to the lips as glitter or frost, but the finish is decidedly luminous and satin. I can’t detect any scent or flavour on this listick at all – I thought I could, but upon closer investigation, it turned out to be the scent of the violet lipstick barrel that I was catching, not the lipstick itself!

 

As you can see, this lipstick is packing some pretty fair pigment, and leaves a respectable stain even after vigorous rubbing.

 

The pigmentation is excellent, the lipstick applies smoothly, and as you can see from the above swatch, it does leave behind a berryish stain when it wears off. The process of wearing off is pretty even on me (the stain helps), but I will tell you now that if you do decide to smooch a wizard (or anyone else) while wearing this lipstick, they will be sporting a very fetching purple lip-brand. Khael might have missed out, but I tried this on my own wizard, several hours after applying the lipstick, and he was suitably emblazoned with my mark…

 

The variation in colour you can see in the swatch photo isn’t uneven application – the finish is so luminous and multidimensional, my camera had trouble dealing with it 😛 Man, my lips have no pigment to them…

 

The smooth, satin finish does have…how would you describe it? A little ‘tack’ to it when it has dried down? It’s not ‘tacky’ like a lipgloss might get, but there is a feeling of things having set a little. It’s not at all unpleasant, and I can only assume that it has something to do with the epic wear time, and the fact that this lipstick is beautifully hydrating (or at least it keeps the moisture in, sometimes it’s hard to tell), for the entire wear time.

Have you joined Urban Decay’s little revolution yet? I first saw these lipsticks last year when they launched, on the paragon sites of Temptalia, Makeup And Beauty Blog and Vampy Varnish (Christine’s gorgeous swatches sold me on Venom!) but my good friend and adventurer Nikki over at Girl Behind the Glasses also has a fabulous review of two of the other colours in this line – pinky nude Streak and bright pink Catfight – so please do go and check out her post if you’re intrigued by these lipsticks!

 

The verdict: What can I say, really? It’s a gorgeous colour, keeps my lips hydrated for the SIX HOURS it wears unscathed, has a luminous finish, is easy to apply, pigmented, unscented and flvaoured, and comes in a tube stylish enough that Coco Chanel would have approved if she’d gone through a bit of a grunge phase. I can’t wait to try some more from ths line of lipsticks (I think there are 20?!), and I wholeheartedly recommend giving it a go yourself, if you haven’t already.

The practicalities: Urban Decay Revolution Lipsticks cost USD 22.00 each for 0.09 oz /2.6 g, are permanent, and may be acquired from http://www.urbandecaycosmetics.com. If you’re not in the US, they have a parcel forwarding service that they recommend, and if you’re in NZ, you can use YouShop from NZ Post to get a US shipping address. Importantly, there’s NO requirement to have a US billing address or credit card, which is usually where things go wrong for non-US consumers. Yay! 😀

 

Until next time, fellow adventurers, don’t forget to check for traps!

Syl

I am an adventuring rogue, not a mercenary for hire, and as such, all opinions expressed here are my own, based on a genuine fondness for/interest in this product. If you have any queries or suggestions, please do not hesitate to pin your parchment to the board (contact me) at thepaintedrogue [at] gmail [dot] com. All content on this website, including images, is the property of the owner/author (Sylirael The Painted Rogue, unless otherwise stated), and may not be reproduced without permission. If you do, I’ll send harpies after you. Smelly ones.