Bullet lipstick

A bullet lipstick is lip colour moulded into a stick and wound up and down in a case. The stick is a balance struck in wax. Waxes with a higher melting point give it the strength not to snap when it is pressed against the lips; those with a lower one let it soften as it touches them; oils and fats let it spread rather than drag; and the colour, finely ground pigment and sometimes a staining dye, is milled into that base before it is moulded.^[1] The proportion of oil to wax decides most of what separates one lipstick from another.

Its neighbours are defined by what they give up. A liquid lipstick trades the stick’s softness for a film that sets and stays; a lip crayon puts similar colour into a fatter pencil you can draw with; a tinted balm keeps the stick but thins the colour to a wash. The bullet sits in the middle: opaque enough to change the colour of the mouth, soft enough to reapply over itself through the day, and small enough to carry.

The finish is the first decision, and it is mostly a decision about oil. A matte lipstick carries more pigment and powder and less oil: it holds its colour and its edge longest, and shows every dry patch. A satin or cream finish is the middle — a soft sheen, full colour, and comfortable for most of a day. A sheer or high-shine formula carries the most oil and the least pigment: the easiest to wear and to reapply without a mirror, and the first to move.

Test a shade on the lips rather than the back of the hand, because the lips’ own colour shows through and shifts it. If mattes feel tight, a satin in a deeper shade gives most of the intensity with less of the dryness.

Start with lips that are smooth but not slick: a balm put on well beforehand and blotted off lets colour grip rather than slide. For everyday wear, apply straight from the bullet, working from the centre of each lip outward and using the angled tip along the edge. For a deep or precise shade, use a lip brush: it pushes colour into the lines of the lips and gives a cleaner edge at the corners and the cupid’s bow, where a bullet is too blunt.

To make it last, blot and repeat. Press a tissue between the lips, then apply a second thin layer: blotting lifts the oil and leaves the pigment, so two thin coats outlast one heavy one. A liner in the same shade, drawn along the edge and shaded a little inward, stops strong colours creeping into the fine lines around the mouth.

Wind up only as much as you need, and wind it down before capping: a bullet left raised is the usual way to break one. Keep it out of the heat: a lipstick left in a car or on a sunny windowsill softens, beads with oil and loses its shape. Wipe the tip with a tissue now and then, do not share it, and replace one that has begun to smell stale — the oils in it have turned.

Coloured lip salves and liquid rouges were nineteenth-century goods; the stick is the idea of holding the colour in enough wax to stand up. Guerlain is widely credited with the first stick lip rouge, Ne m’oubliez pas, said to date from 1870 — but Cosmetics and Skin, working from trade literature, found no first-hand evidence for the claim.^[2] What can be dated is the case. Blondeau et Cie sold its Vinolia Lypsyl in a metal tube no later than 1892, and a Dorin catalogue of 1893 shows lipsticks in nickel cases, pushed up with a finger or on a slide; Scovill’s American case of 1915, often called the first metal lipstick case, was not.^[2]

The twist that makes the modern bullet came next. James Bruce Mason Jr., of Nashville, Tennessee, filed a patent in July 1922, granted in October 1923, for a holder in which turning a knurled head worked a threaded rod that raised the stick’s cup out of its casing and drew it back.^[3] It is the earliest known patent for a swivel mechanism, which is not the same as proof that no one made one before.^[2] By the end of the decade the case was an accessory in its own right: the Victoria and Albert Museum holds an evening bag of about 1929 that hides a lipstick in a brass case inside its silk tassel.^[4]

War changed the case and the colour at once. Metal shortages sent makers back to cardboard and early plastics, and many women moved their sticks into old metal cases rather than use the substitutes.^[2] Red became a uniform issue: when the United States Marine Corps Women’s Reserve was formed in 1942, Elizabeth Arden’s Vibrant Red, matched to the red piping and chevrons of its uniform, became Montezuma Red, the standard lipstick in every recruit’s kit.^[5] After the war the argument moved to wear. Hazel Bishop’s long-lasting lipstick went on sale in 1950 on the promise that it would not eat, bite or kiss off, and by 1953 it had a quarter of the American lipstick market.^[6] Colour that stays put is still what most bullets are sold on — and the reason the liquid lipstick exists.