Thickener

Beeswax is the material a honeybee colony builds its comb from, and the oldest wax with a documented place in cosmetics: it sets the shape of a lipstick, thickens a balm, and holds oil and water together in a cream.

Candelilla wax is boiled off the stems of a leafless desert shrub that coats itself to keep from drying out, and it is the usual plant-derived stand-in for beeswax; its international trade is controlled under CITES.

Carnauba is the hard, high-melting wax a Brazilian fan palm secretes onto its fronds to survive the dry season, and in cosmetics it is the ingredient that stops a lipstick going soft in a warm room.

Ozokerite is a mineral wax, mined out of rock rather than distilled from crude oil, whose fine tangled crystals trap liquid oils and stop a lipstick sweating them out onto its own surface.

A viscous, non-volatile hydrocarbon polymer that gives lip gloss its thickness, its cling and much of its shine; it is the fraction that stays behind once the volatile solvent it was dissolved in has gone.