Lip tint

A lip tint colours the lip rather than covering it. Where a lipstick lays a film of pigment on top, a tint carries its colour in a thin liquid, water, gel or a light oil, and the dyes in it take on the lip itself, so the colour remains after the shine or the film has gone. The result is sheer and even, closer to the flush of a lip after a cold drink than to paint, and it survives meals that would take a gloss off entirely.

The kind comes in several textures. Water tints are the thinnest and dry to a bare stain; gel and jelly tints add a little cushion and shine; velvet tints dry to a soft, blurred matte; glossy tints, now the most common kind in Korean shops, leave a glassy shine over the stain. Its neighbours are the lip oil, which mostly coats; the liquid lipstick, which is opaque and dries to a film; and the cheek-and-lip tint, made for both, which has a page of its own.

Choose the finish first, because it decides how the colour wears. A glossy or dewy tint is the most forgiving on dry lips and looks freshest; a velvet tint looks more finished and lasts longer, but shows texture; a water tint is almost invisible as a product and suits anyone who wants colour without the feeling of makeup. A peel-off tint, painted on thickly and lifted away after a few minutes, leaves the strongest stain of all, at the cost of a slightly longer routine.

Then the shade. Because a tint is sheer, it mixes with your own lip colour: a cool pink reads differently on a pale, pink lip and on a deep, brown one, so judge a swatch on the lip rather than the hand. The shades sold as MLBB, “my lips but better”, are the easy place to start. And because the stain builds, a tint that looks too bright in the bottle is often right after a single layer, blotted.

The look most associated with Korean tints is the gradient: colour strongest at the centre of the mouth, fading towards the edges. To wear it, dab the tint on the inner part of both lips, press them together, and blur the edge outward with a fingertip or a small brush until no line shows. A little concealer or nude balm on the outer lip first makes the fade softer. For an even, all-over stain instead, cover the whole lip, wait a minute, blot, and add a second layer if you want it deeper.

Tints sink into dry patches and darken there, so smooth the lips first and let any balm settle before you start. Work quickly with water tints, which set fast; gel and glossy tints give more time. A tint will not come off on a cup the way a gloss does, but an oil-based cleanser or balm lifts it at the end of the day.

Tints are sold on wear, and the claims are worth reading practically. What lasts is the stain, not the shine: a glossy tint looks freshly applied for an hour or two, then settles into a flush that stays through a meal. Oily food and a layer of balm on top shorten its life, because oil loosens whatever sits on the surface; water and coffee barely touch it. The stain also fades from the inside out, where the lips meet, so a quick dab at the centre refreshes a gradient without starting again. Velvet and peel-off tints tend to last longest, and water tints fade most evenly. When a label promises a number of hours, read it as the maker’s figure for the stain in good conditions, and plan on a touch-up after eating.

The stain is an old idea with a long run of objections behind it. Before the First World War, liquid lip rouges, mostly alkaline solutions of cochineal or carmine, had a following, but they dripped and spilled, and lost ground once indelible lipsticks arrived.^[1] Those lipsticks stained with dyes: eosin, a derivative of fluorescein developed by Heinrich Caro at BASF in 1874, and later the water-insoluble “bromo acids”, which reacted with the lip to leave a stain that stayed after the rest of the lipstick had worn off. Tangee sold a lipstick from 1922 that was orange in the stick and changed colour on the lips, and the chemist Paul Baudecroux is said to have dissolved eosin in propylene glycol for Rouge Baiser, first sold in 1927, a stain some thought too strong.^[1]

By the 1950s the leading American makers wanted colour from pigment as well as stain. Hazel Bishop, whose long-lasting lipstick of 1950 began what the trade called the lipstick wars, wrote in 1953 that without pigment “the lip application has a ‘thin water-colored’ look which, in my opinion, is neither satisfactory or desirable to the American women.”^[1]

The Korean tint is that look, chosen on purpose. By 2014 an American fashion site was describing the gradient lip as all over Korean Instagram, and recommending a water-based gel tint to build it.^[2] What Hazel Bishop thought no woman wanted is now sold as the point: colour that looks like the lip, not like paint on it.