Name: Revlon Colorburst Lip Gloss in Peony

Date of Purchase: Fall 2012

Grade: B+

Notes: This blog has taken a turn for the glossy, hasn’t it? I swear it’s just a coincidence that my current Gloss Period (cf. here, here, here) intersects with the part of my lipstick chronology that comprises my first Gloss Period, i.e. late 2012. Well, that was an awkward sentence. I’m writing a dissertation on seventeenth-century concepts of time, which means, of course, that I can no longer write coherently about time. Let’s try again. I’ve been buying and reviewing a lot of glosses in the past few months. Simultaneously, I’ve reached an especially gloss-filled section of my lipstick chronology. That will have to do.

Every American drugstore brand seems to have a dupe for NARS Orgasm lip gloss, and Peony is Revlon’s iteration: a semi-opaque peach crammed with gold glitter. It must be the most un-me lip color ever created, far outside my fuchsia-violet-pinkyred comfort zone. Why did I buy it? All I can remember is that I picked up Revlon Bordeaux after reading an enthusiastic review from Glitter Geek. I didn’t stop to consider that I never wore warm pinks or glittery lip colors. Instead, I bought the epitome of everything I had always avoided:

As you can see, it’s looking a little dry, due to its age (75 in gloss years?) and the fact that glitter-filled glosses tend to dry out more quickly. But in a closeup in direct sunlight, Peony doesn’t look a day over three months.

In shade, Peony is relatively subdued; in direct warm late-afternoon light, the glitter springs forth. (Writing that phrase made me think of Tolkien: “From the ashes a fire shall be woken; / A light from the shadows shall spring…” Remind me to tell you about my upbringing by two Lord of the Rings geeks from the ’60s.)

I suspect that many people consider Peony a layering gloss, but it delivers a fair amount of pigment on its own:

Plus, I have a strange prejudice against layering gloss over lipstick. For me, every purchase of a lip color represents an attempt to capture the Platonic ideal of that color (and texture, and finish, and so on). I want my lipsticks and glosses to stand alone. It’s an irrational aesthetic preference that I can’t quite explain, but there you are. It always baffles me when bloggers praise a lipstick for being shiny, “so you don’t have to layer a gloss on top!” Who are these people who view lipstick as merely a primer for gloss? Lipstick is sacred, people.

Anyway, I betrayed my ideals and layered Peony over two lipsticks. First, Maybelline Nude Lust, a light pinky beige:

Ugh, I hate this. For some reason, the peach base and gold glitter make the nude lipstick look muddy. I had much better luck with Urban Decay Revolution Lipstick in Streak, a peachy pink:

The Peony + Nude Lust combination looks a little better in context, but only a little:

And, for good measure, Peony on its own:

One more thing: Why is this gloss called “Peony”? Peonies are usually a cooler pink, no? Did Revlon wanted a name that sounded like “peach” without actually being “Peach”? How does one get paid to name beauty products? Questions, questions.