Rouge Allure Velvet advert by Chanel (via Glamour)

‘If you’re sad, add more lipstick and attack.’

Coco Chanel

Recently, I was in the market for a red lipstick. I’d never been big on lip makeup before, since I found no colour really suited me, and instead it looked like it’d been slapped on my face like a sticker. But I wanted a red lip anyway – it was time. ‘I’m 21 now, I’m a woman,’ I thought, as I relentlessly Googled red lipsticks for true autumns under £20. It was a struggle.

Eventually, I settled on Chili by MAC Cosmetics, which I fortunately love. Unfortunately it was also the first lipstick I considered, before temporarily abandoning it for about 17 other shades which I thought would suit me better.

(Taking this moment to thank my sisters, who put up with my endless text messages about every shade of red I could find during that week.)

What I didn’t remember at the time was an article I read about the ‘lipstick index’ (or the ‘lipstick effect’). The theory is that lipstick sells more during the early stages of a recession, with Estée Lauder chairman Leonard Lauder coining the term around 2001.

I was (and still am) mostly broke, but even so I was religiously following TikTok influencers who were telling me what luxury makeup to buy, and then blowing my monthly budget at the Space NK right next to my university campus. Why was this?

A Brief History of the Lipstick Index

The first thing I think of is the launch of the famous Kylie Lip Kits in 2015, that were swiftly followed by an economic crash in the spring of 2016. The theory is proven to be accurate again when we consider the 2008 recession – I remember seeing at least a few Revlon bullets in my mother’s and grandmother’s makeup bags. It seems that buying lipstick during an economic crisis is a generational habit.

Of course, both of these examples are only in my lifetime. As far back as World War II, lipstick was one of the only luxuries not rationed in the UK. When women were drawing on stockings with eyeliner because they couldn’t afford any (please look this up, it’s hilarious), they were still buying crazy amounts of lip makeup. This was likely due to the misogynistic ‘Beauty Is Your Duty’ propaganda at the time.

What’s more, makeup brands knew this spending habit and moved to profit from it. English makeup artist Elizabeth Arden was commissioned to create a shade called ‘Montezuma Red’ in 1941 specifically for ladies in the US Marines, and later made ‘Victory Red’ for women in the US Army due to soaring demand. Lipstick was actively engaging with women’s sense of patriotism to make money off the war. Wild.

Even back then, brands were repackaging old shades to sell them again at a higher price – the 1945 ‘Winged Victory Red’ was the same shade from four years prior, only with special wings on the lipstick casing. Dare I mention the Kylie Lip Kit shade scandal of 2017?

There are so, so many examples of what I’m talking about here. My point is – brands resell the same repackaged lip product over and over again to save money during economic crises, and because of the lipstick index, we keep buying the ‘new’ shades anyway!

I’m not here to criticise women and girls for spending their money how they like – I have absolutely splashed out on too many makeup products over the years, and I absolutely will after I hit publish on this article. But I want to examine how the beauty market takes advantage of the phenomenal lipstick index by overproducing similar lipsticks in quick succession, and how TikTok has made this issue worse for all of us.

Why Lipstick?

Simply, it’s a luxury item that’s still very affordable. When we cut down on more expensive goods like cars, handbags, and watches, we feel a loss in this ever-moving consumerist culture we so enjoy. So we buy a little slice of luxury instead – spending somewhere between £20 and £60 rather than upwards of £100.

Lipstick, as well as acting as a little pick-me-up, is more obvious than eyeshadow for example. You can immediately tell when someone’s wearing a nude lip, but might not always notice a nude eye look. Plus, lipstick can quickly be applied in public, unlike eyeshadow – a lot of the lipstick index is about being seen using a small luxury item. Lipstick is loud. Lipstick says something.

Screenshot of a ‘what’s in my bag’ video featuring 6 lip products and 6 perfumes, and another with 5 lip products and 2 perfumes by hhhhaleema and moriahhhhr_ on TikTok

In the modern day, we see this manifest in makeup hauls, PR gifts and ‘what’s in my bag’ TikTok videos. We don’t actually have to see women using lipstick in their everyday lives to want what they have – we just need to see somebody with a large social media following being in possession of a lot of lip products.

And when it’s not lipstick, like during the face covering era of the coronavirus recession, it’s perfume. We’ve all seen the ‘how to smell like’ videos on TikTok that are essentially slideshows of different perfumes by scent, like vanilla or strawberry. The thing is, the products are still luxury products! I can’t count how many times I’ve seen one of those slideshows use an image of £100 Black Opium, telling me I’ll smell like ‘old money’ (whatever that means).

Perfume recommendations by nicole_perfumes and carolinemstern on TikTok

Whatever the little luxury item is, it’s clear that spending to improve one’s attractiveness is still a culturally necessary ritual for women, even during cost of living crises when we’re switching to off-brand orange juice. But we still haven’t answered my biggest question: why do we keep buying?

Because Brands Keep Making New Lipsticks

(I know I just won the most obvious answer award, but bear with me.)

Inevitably, today’s makeup will become tomorrow’s outdated, expired clutter… unless it’s an incredibly lucky product. In that case, it’ll become a nostalgic piece, like the Kylie Lip Kits I mentioned earlier. Going back to these, however, I don’t know anyone who buys these as much as they did back in the day, even though they’re referenced constantly in pop culture! Their value has gone from commodity to comedy, it seems. You can never come back from comedy.

This is a little disheartening maybe, because growing up I thought they were the epitome of cool. All my favourite YouTubers would swatch the newest colours when they dropped, and if you were a very lucky 13 year old at the time you might get a set for your birthday. Now, despite their loss of it-girl-lipstick status, I’d argue they had the longest run at the top.

EOS in Strawberry Sorbet (discontinued formula), Maybelline Baby Lips in Pink Punch (discontinued in the UK), Rimmel London Kate Moss Collection in Clear (discontinued)

My point here is this: no matter how much you love a lipstick, it will always be pushed aside by the newer, cooler option. Each of these three lip balms were my favourite for a time when I was growing up, but they’re socially, and physically, obsolete now. (You can literally see my taste in cosmetics mature here. I love that.)

This constant movement to the next is the natural relationship between the market and the consumer, and the lipstick index fits in nicely with this situation. I imagine the beauty market and the lipstick index as two little girls hosting the cutest little lemonade stand. We, the consumers, are buying, so they’re both profiting and everyone’s happy.

But, due to the rise of the internet, that peaceful companionship between the beauty market, the lipstick index, and the consumers has been gatecrashed. And by the most volatile social app on everyone’s phone, no less.

TikTok Is Speeding Up the Beauty Market

Looking at TikTok today, you can immediately find the newest lipstick to hit the market being flaunted by the usual horde of influencers – but only for about four weeks. After that, a new product is launched and the dance begins again.

This is an incredibly short period of time for a cosmetic product to be trending! Lipsticks don’t expire until around the two year mark, but because each product only trends for about a month (as of 2023), it’s common practice to only use it for a tiny fraction of its lifetime.

Unlike the comparatively simple days of Instagram, where we posted picture after picture of the same cool things for two years (remember the galaxy print trend of 2010-2012?), TikTok has introduced us to light-speed trends that disappear before they’ve even taken hold of our culture. There’s barely any time to even buy the products we see influencers use because we’ve moved on already. The market has adapted to reflect this by constantly producing new goods.

So here I am, newly enlightened by the de-influencers of TikTok, persuading you not to spend your money on any of these £20+ lipsticks that have bombarded the market recently. (At least, not without being properly informed first.)

The Pretty/Useless Lipstick List

Clinique: Almost Lipstick in Black Honey

This was the one I fell for. Black Honey, the ‘looks good on everyone’ cult classic from 1971. It’s also the lip that Liv Tyler wore when playing Arwen in The Lord of The Rings, so I immediately added it to my wishlist.

As soon as I had, however, everyone else did too. I remember it being sold out literally everywhere for months, and the only thing to comfort me would be the inevitable reviews that would come pouring onto my TikTok for you page.

I looked for a flaw in each video, but couldn’t find one. Each of these girls looked beautiful in Black Honey, so I must too! The obsession grew, and I finally bought one off of Beauty Bay in the winter of 2022, a year after it first gained attention.

Honestly, I don’t think the lip suits me very well. The whole thing about Black Honey is that it’s ‘your lips but better’, a barely-there lipstick. So when applied with the lightest touch, it’s beautiful – but ultimately underwhelming. When you slather on more and more it becomes a deeper plum colour, which would look great on cooler skin tones, but not on me. Oof.

I still carry it in my makeup bag, though. One day, when the lighting is just right…

Benefit Cosmetics: Benetint Cheek and Lip Stain

This one has kind of a crazy history. It’s also the lip product that started the USP war – it doubles as a blush. Mind blowing, according to everyone who used TikTok when Benetint became popular.

Despite their frankly appalling shade range of exactly three colours at the time, I ended up browsing their products online. Pretty soon I woke up from the hype and realised that every lipstick can also be used as blush – makeup doesn’t have rules! We’d been sold another white lie, for £25. That’s way too much for what is essentially red pigment suspended in water.

The history, though: The same Benetint formula we use today was originally sold in the ’70s. As a nipple tint. In strip clubs. I have nothing to say that would top the surprise this gave me, so let’s move onto the next one as fast as we can.

Charlotte Tilbury Beauty Ltd: Pillow Talk

Ah, Ms Charlotte Tilbury. If you haven’t seen her, she’s the first thing you imagine when you think of a makeup artist in her 50s. Glamorous. Expensive. Quintessentially English. Uses the word ‘daaarlings’. Her makeup brand looks like it’ll be a staple in the beauty community for years to come.

Pillow Talk is a unique member of this list, because when this went viral I noticed girls on TikTok start to look for dupes. As consumers, we were realising £27 was pretty pricey for a nude shade that you could find at Boots for less than half the money. In came a wave of free advertising for Loreal.

But this money-saving movement was short lived. Pillow Talk now came in ‘10% off’ sets that included the matching lip liner. The price is £42, but because we were told we’d be saving money by purchasing both products together, the product sold out. (Charlotte fully took advantage of girl math here.)

At the end of the day, it seems Charlotte Tilbury won us over – because Loreal just doesn’t have that luxury brand edge.

Dior Beauty: Dior Addict Lip Glow Oil

This one blew up. It was the new Black Honey, and every it girl in the spring of 2023 wanted one. This lip, like Clinique’s, was marketed as a perfect match for everyone, because it contains barely any pigment at all. It’s essentially just a gloss.

Okay, maybe this one shouldn’t make the list because it’s technically not a lipstick. But as far as I know, a lip oil does the exact same thing as a lip balm – which retail for as little as £1.99. So why are we spending £32 on a mostly clear lip oil? To be seen holding the packaging and applying the product. The lipstick index strikes again.

I can’t count how many ‘what’s in my bag’ TikTok videos I’ve seen these feature in. While I love them (and secretly wish I could pack a ‘hot girl bag’), I can’t relate to carrying a different lippie around with me every day of the week. Especially when the lippies are semi-transparent oils! Hell, I can barely bring myself to reapply the same 3 year old chalk I carry everywhere when it wears off after two drinks. To me, the Dior lip oil looks like a whole lot of money for a whole lot of nothing.

MAC Cosmetics: Squirt Plumping Gloss Stick

Yeah. Not a fan of the name either, and it seems no one even knew how to apply this lip properly. This collection came in a crazy array of shades like pale blue and lime green, but each tube fell apart when applied.

This sparked a micro trend of buying the lipsticks to see if you could apply them the right way – that is, not rolling up too much product out of the tube – and it worked! Influencers shared videos of their shock when the product snapped in half onto their face with a swipe, and these YouTube-thumbnail moments were enough to sell hundreds of these things. Honestly, I’m not sure if it was a happy accident for MAC’s PR team or a carefully planned stunt.

I really dislike neon colours, and I have no use for these lipsticks, but I have to admit I hovered in the MAC aisle at Boots because of the hype surrounding them. Until I saw that the green shade was called ‘Like Squirt’. Christ.

Dior Beauty: Sequin Liquid Lipstick

I won’t be typing the full name because no one has the time.

It’s always a good day for Dior on TikTok – coquette girls and clean girls and old money girls all have the latest blush palette. (And good for them because those things are gorgeous!) The newest item to hit the market, however, has a little Houdini moment packaged in.

After you’ve applied the lip and waited for it to set, you press your lips together and a glittery finish magically appears. Pretty genius.

Aside from this little bit of magic, it’s just another luxury collection of lipsticks in the usual reds and purples. The fact that even Dior – one of the most famous and profitable haute couture brands around – needs to add a USP to their already existing products says a lot about how competitive (and cheap) the makeup market is today.

As I’m writing this – they’re now sold out everywhere. They’ve been wiped from Dior Beauty, but they can still be found out of stock on several designer department store websites. These were a limited edition version of the regular Rouge Dior Forever Liquid lipsticks, and it looks like we’ve seen the last of them.

The Last Word

All these lipsticks have one thing in common: you don’t need them. You probably already have a product that does the exact same thing, just in different packaging!

If I got up and cleared out my makeup bag right now, I bet could find at least 3 lipsticks that are all extremely similar shades of orangey-nude. But when I bought them, I would swear to anyone who would listen that they’re different in some small way – ‘This one is matte, and this one is velvet matte’, etc. No one’s buying it.

And because we use these products once and never again, it greatly adds to the waste we produce. I’ve started seeing people sell expired makeup on Vinted and Depop to try and combat this – but if a product isn’t flying off the shelves anymore, why would we bother to buy it secondhand?

Yes, the point of the lipstick index is to buy something beautifully unnecessary – but we don’t need to be spending more on items that we’ll never use again. Instead, we should be investing in small luxuries that we’ll love until the last swipe, not just until its shelf life expires.

If all this sounds like someone cynical trying to kill the fun of shopping (not what I’m aiming for at all), then let me explain it in girl math: If you’ve already bought the lipstick, using it is free. And you deserve free lipstick.