Read my lips

Make-up changes things. It just does. So, one minute the air stewardess in my line of vision was an animated, peanut-supplying, bar-stool companion. The next — after a few studied sweeps of red lipstick — she was all fasten- your-seatbelt, back-to-business efficiency. From naught but fun to no-nonsense in less than 60 seconds. That’s pretty impressive. It’s also particularly, even peculiarly, feminine.

Our relationship with lipstick runs deep. It’s the mark of a woman. It’s war paint. It’s come-hitherdom. It’s all those things and more — all contained in one small tube.

I’ve always been more of a tinted lip balm kind of a girl (currently enamoured of Korres Wild Rose Lip Butter, £6; hqhair.com). I like to think this doesn’t mean I’m less of a saucy wench, just that my lips are more prone than some to dryness. Still, like most gals, I understand lipstick’s worth, though not as much as Poppy King, aka the Lipstick Queen, for whom lipstick is the symbol of womanhood. “It’s a utterly feminine iconography,” she says. “Others, such as lingerie and shoes, have been hijacked by men, but lipstick is totally female.”

For her latest lipstick trick, King has gone back to the days of Guinevere to create her Medieval Tint Treatment. It is, in part, her retort to the beauty industry, which is, according to King, focusing on developing lipsticks with appetite suppressants, an idea far removed from her feminine view of the waxy stuff. “I’ve been researching lipstick for my whole career,” she says. “Centuries ago, it was considered a sin to wear lipstick, but women being women still wanted their lips to look swollen and red, so they would squeeze lemon juice on them. It was like an early heroin chic: deathly pale skin and aggravated lips.” King was her own guinea pig — lemons at the ready — to show her chemist the effect she was after. The result is a lipstick that feels like a cross between a balm and a stick, but which makes your lips look naturally redder, and isn’t drying

It’s a gentle mix of the fun and the forceful sides of ourselves that, despite its historical reference, feels very modern indeed.

Lipstick Queen Medieval Lipstick, £17; spacenk.co.uk

James Brown Dry Shampoo In the 1980s, every girl owned dry shampoo, then the regular blow-dry took over. Now dry shampoo is making its return as a beauty kit essential. There is none better than James Brown London’s new version, housed in his signature sleek white packaging — it looks expensive, but costs only £6, from Boots. Even if he weren’t a great guy and Kate Moss’s bestie, we would still love it.

Chloé Body & Bath Range The floral Chloé eau de parfum has quickly become a distinctive modern classic. Now you can wallow in it, thanks to the launch of Crème body products. They all come in retro grooved glass jars with silver-plated lids, which are destined to remain as storage in your bathroom. Beautiful and ecofriendly — we love it. Chloé Crème body cream, £45, bath cream, £40, and body cream scrub, £40

Perfumes: The Guide

Beyond Love by Kilian ****

Tuberose tuberose I have never much liked tuberose compositions such as Oscar de la Renta or Jean Paul Gaultier Fragile. It seems to me that they achieve their effect by clipping the wings of the central note itself. Not only is the smell of tuberose flowers wonderful, it isn’t even, properly speaking, floral in the clean, vegetal sense. Tuberoses smell of butter, rubber, leather, blood and heaven knows what else. Using fresh flowers as a reference, much as Roudnitska did with muguet (lily of the valley) for Diorissimo, Calice Becker, Beyond Love’s creator, has composed a straight-up tuberose using the best absolute from India, with touches of other notes (magnolia, iris) used only to narrow the gap between the extract and the fresh flower. The result is the best tuberose soliflore on earth.

Taken from Perfume by Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez

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