Just in time for spooky season, I’ve made two bone-chilling discoveries. The first is that Revlon discontinued its Glass Shine lipsticks at the beginning of this year. The second is that NARS is currently selling off its remaining stock of Velvet Matte Lip Pencils and replacing them with an uninspiring ten-shade lineup of Powermatte High-Intensity Lip Pencils (which, at $30, happen to cost $3 more than the Velvet Mattes). My favorite sheer lipstick formula and my favorite matte lipstick formula, gone in the same year? 2023 really is coming for everything we love.

I’m less upset about the Glass Shines, both because I’ve had less time to get attached to them (they came out in 2019, which by my calculations was just last year) and because I’ve long since given up expecting Revlon to make rational decisions. I mean, the brand had been struggling for years before the Glass Shines went viral on TikTok in January. Did the higher-ups at Revlon take that as a sign that they might be making a mistake by discontinuing that formula? Hardly! Did they replace it with a similar formula? Hell, no! So here I languish, nursing my nub of Beaming Strawberry and remembering the other popular lip formulas that the Glass Shines have joined in the Revlon graveyard: Lip Butters, Balm Stains, Matte Balms, Lacquer Balms, Super Lustrous Sheers, and probably some more that I’m forgetting.

NARS, on the other hand…that really hurts. NARS was my favorite beauty brand for a long time, in large part because of the Velvet Matte Lip Pencils. The Velvet Mattes had it all: a broad and nuanced shade range, especially after the 2017 shade extension; a lightweight, long-lasting, unscented, relatively non-drying formula; portable, aesthetically pleasing, environmentally friendly packaging that kept the product fresh (my Mysterious Red is old enough to enter fifth grade); and the distinction of having existed, and outclassed the rest of the market, for about two decades. But that last attribute was probably what doomed them; it seems that they’ve become victims of the beauty industry’s relentless push for newness.

NARS stopped being my favorite brand in the last couple of years, when I noticed that they were discontinuing all the products that had made them stand out among their peers. The whole brand now feels hollowed out. Gone are the eyeshadow duos in unexpected color pairings. Gone are many of the cult-favorite blushes: Gaiety and Mata Hari would have been perfect for 2023’s cotton-candy-pink trend, but they disappeared several years ago. Gone are more than half of the original thirty Audacious lipsticks. Gone are the inventive, occasionally controversial limited-edition collections, such as Guy Bourdin, Steven Klein, and Sarah Moon.

And now the Matte Lip Pencils? It’s as if MAC were kicking the original Ruby Woo to the curb.

I can understand why a floundering brand like Revlon might keep making the same mistakes it’s made for a decade: clearly, it doesn’t have the most discerning people at the helm. I’m more confused about NARS. When I started writing this post, I assumed that François Nars, long known as one of the most hands-on founders in the beauty industry, must have stepped back from his namesake brand at some point in the last few years. However, the company website still describes him as “Founder & Creative Director,” and I don’t think that’s just an empty title—after all, he did the photography for this spring’s Orgasm Collection. I find it hard to believe he’d willingly dilute his vision like this, but who knows what’s happening behind the scenes? Maybe Nars wants to focus on photography and allow younger executives to carry NARS through the 2020s; maybe he’s just gotten lazy, or listened to the wrong people, or had a series of spectacularly bad ideas. Whatever the cause, NARS doesn’t quite feel like itself anymore.

I know I’m not alone in my misgivings: when I bitched about the discontinuation of the Velvet Matte Lip Pencils on Instagram this week, more than a few people agreed that NARS has made some unaccountable choices lately. One person even compared NARS’ trajectory to the bizarre decline and eventual demise of Bite Beauty, another brand that abandoned its distinctive niche in the market. Unlike Bite, though, NARS doesn’t seem to be rebranding entirely. To me, this feels more like an Urban Decay situation, in which a brand founded in the ’90s jettisons the aesthetic—and the customers—that originally made it successful, but manages to stay afloat.

Yes, I am indulging in some hypocrisy here. Just last year, I admonished my fellow millennials to stop complaining online about Glossier’s partnership with Olivia Rodrigo, and here I am complaining online about the changes to my own favorite beauty brand. The difference is that I can’t figure out a reason for NARS’ new direction. With Glossier, the reason was obvious: the brand wanted to attract Gen Z customers in addition to their millennial fans (and they succeeded, if the number of Glossier stickers I saw at the boarding school where I taught was any indication). NARS, though, hasn’t had any financial or internal problems that I know of. I haven’t seen any speculation on Reddit that it might go out of business. I don’t even blame NARS for doubling down on the boring Orgasm products, as Urban Decay did with its Naked line; I just don’t understand who asked for these mass discontinuations of its other products.

Then again, the one constant in the beauty industry has always been innovation or, at least, the appearance thereof. Being able to buy the same lipstick formula for well over a decade is the exception for us makeup lovers, not the rule. So I’d like to end this post on a positive note and, as the tenth anniversary of my purchase of Mysterious Red approaches, pay a little tribute to my favorite red lipstick of all time. I own four Velvet Matte Lip Pencils and love them all, but Mysterious Red towers above the rest—in quality, if not in actual stature. I have been sharpening it since November 2013, after all.

I stand by all the sentiments I expressed in my rave review in 2014 (check out that early-2010s J. Crew statement necklace in the last photo, lol):

“How to describe the sensation of connecting with a lipstick? Not putting it on and thinking ‘it’ll do,’ or ‘this will look good when I have a bit of a tan,’ but ‘holy shit, I just got ten times more attractive’? It’s sort of like falling in love, except it’s not free…Or maybe it’s like reading a book and seeing your own experiences and memories reflected back to you, made brighter and warmer by the author’s powers of perception.”

Everything I said about Mysterious Red in that initial review has become even truer with the passage of time. At the age of twenty-six, I described Mysterious Red as “my staple red lipstick, the one I can trust to flatter me whenever I wear it.” In 2023, its magical blend of warm and cool tones is just as flattering on my thirty-five-year-old face as it was when I bought it. In fact, I look better in Mysterious Red now than I did in my mid-twenties, and that’s no coincidence: François Nars has always liked to show his products on older faces. Even more than Ruby Woo, Mysterious Red is a red with character, a red you grow into.

I haven’t worn Mysterious Red as often as it deserves; it makes enough of a statement that I generally save it for special occasions. But that means I associate it with some of the happiest moments of my twenties and thirties: an academic conference in Venice; lunch at London’s Borough Market; the first unmasked day of teaching since the pandemic began; innumerable date nights. And every time I wear it, the pleasure of those memories enhances the pleasure of looking my best in my current form.

Earlier this week, when I noticed that the Velvet Matte Lip Pencils had disappeared from most of the usual sites, I defied my usual no-backups policy and panic-ordered a new Mysterious Red from Macy’s. My pencil from 2013 still works perfectly, but it’s reassuring to know that I’m set for red lips for at least another decade—by which time I might have discovered an even better red lipstick. I doubt it, though.

Let me know your thoughts on the current trajectory of NARS and/or Revlon! I’d love to hear them.