Lip brush

A lip brush is a small, flat brush of firm, closely packed fibres, a few millimetres wide, tapering or rounding to a tip. The tip draws the edge of the mouth, the corners and the cupid’s bow; the flat presses colour into the lips and works it into the fine lines, for a more even film than a bullet laid on top. It takes colour from anything soft enough to pick up, a lipstick, a pot, a palette or a gloss, and it reaches the last of a lipstick long after the bullet has worn down into its case.

Many are made to travel. The head slides into a metal or plastic barrel, or sits under a cap that fits on the other end to lengthen the handle, so the brush can go in a bag without marking it. A lip brush is not a lip liner, which draws with a firm pencil and leaves a line of its own colour, nor the doe-foot wand in a gloss, which carries colour but cannot shape it.

The tip decides the job. A square or chisel tip, like Rae Morris’s #19, gives the sharpest edge and crisp corners for strong colours; a rounded or oval tip, like Crown Brush’s C464, follows the curve of the bow and fills quickly; a finely tapered point, like Patrick Ta’s, draws the thinnest line and blends a liner into the lipstick. A wider head, like Westman Atelier’s, covers the whole mouth in a few strokes. Firmness matters as much. A firm, dense head, such as MAC’s 318, which the house calls an ultra-firm paddle, pushes matte and long-wear formulas into the lips; a softer one spreads glosses and sheer colour without streaks.

Choose synthetic fibre for almost every lip product. Hair is porous and soaks up creams and liquids,^[1] which clogs a lip brush and makes it hard to clean; synthetic fibre can be washed as often as it needs. Then choose the form. A retractable or capped brush, like Hakuhodo’s push-up brush in its aluminium case or Chantecaille’s self-sealing one, is for carrying; a long wooden handle, like Laura Mercier’s, gives the most control at a mirror.

Load the brush lightly, stroking it across the top of the bullet or through the pan with the flat of the head, so that the colour sits on both faces of the brush rather than in a blob at the tip. Outline first: two short strokes to shape the cupid’s bow, one along the centre of the lower lip, then out to each corner. Fill with the flat of the brush, pressing the colour into the lips, and take it right into the corners, where a bullet cannot reach. For colour that must last, blot with a tissue and add a second thin layer.

A brush also does what a stick cannot. It softens a liner into the lipstick, so that no line is left when the colour wears, and it mixes two shades on the back of the hand before they go on. Wipe it on a tissue between colours, wash it every few uses with a mild soap and warm water, since wax and oil collect at the roots of the fibres, and keep it capped or retracted between uses. Keep it to yourself, as you would a lipstick.

In Japan, beni, the red made from safflower, is “typically applied to the lips using a make-up brush”, as a label at the V&A puts it; the museum holds two brushes that the beni maker Isehan-honten made in 2021 for its Komachi-beni, of weasel hair and so dense that, once moistened, they hold enough liquid to dissolve the dry green rouge into a vivid red.^[2]

In the West, lip colour often went on with a fingertip. Elizabeth Arden promised that “just a tiny bit” of her Venetian Lip Paste “tipped on the fingers” would colour the lips evenly,^[3] and in 1925 the producer Ned Wayburn taught the students of his New York dancing studios to dip the little finger into a jar of moist rouge and press it against the lips.^[4] The brush appears in the studio make-up of the 1930s. Elizabeth Arden’s screen make-up of 1935 outlined the lips with an indelible red pencil, then filled them with paste rouge using “a special brush”.^[5]

Within a few years the brush was sold beside the lipstick. Revlon added a lipstick brush to its range in 1941.^[6] In 1946 Chen Yu followed its Cloud Silk Lipstick with a Cloud Silk Lip Brush of “genuine red sable in purse-size case”.^[7] In Britain, Eylure’s range by the end of 1949 included a Lipbrush sold as “the finest method of applying any brand of lipstick”, a “pure sable brush with protective cap”, and the actress Gene Tierney was photographed using one for its showcards.^[8] Estée Lauder made hers “an automatic push-up of imported sable hair”, in a gold-finished case.^[9] Long-wear lipstick asked for more care: a Hazel Bishop booklet of 1957 noted that many women liked to apply the basic design with the lipstick, “then fill in corners and round out small curves with a lipstick brush”.^[10]

The retractable brushes in the carousel, in aluminium barrels and self-sealing cases, are that purse-size case with synthetic fibre in place of the sable.