Auxiliary Beauty recently passed its tenth birthday, so it’s fitting that this post concerns one of the first lipstick formulas I ever reviewed on my blog! In fact, my very earliest lipstick purchase, way back in the fall of 2009, was a Revlon Super Lustrous Lipstick in Certainly Red. (The only other makeup I owned at the time was concealer, so when I wore Certainly Red, my face resembled the original Great Gatsby cover art minus the eyes.) Since then, I’ve tried probably close to twenty more Super Lustrous shades. Here’s my current collection of five, L-R: Dramatic, Fire Peach, Kiss Me Coral, Naughty Plum, and Va Va Violet.

Swatches in the same order:

Here’s the thing about the Super Lustrous formula: it is, in the parlance of today’s youth, mid. Mid not only in quality but also in opacity (between shiny and matte) and in pigmentation (between sheer and opaque). And mid in the sense that the slightly slippy, slightly translucent finish is best suited to mid-toned colors: not too pale or too dark. I’ve been truly disappointed by only one Super Lustrous lipstick (Black Cherry, a patchy mess), but I’ve never been blown away, either.

This lipstick lineup is, above all else, reliable. If you want to test a particular color against your skin tone, and you don’t want to pay too much money or take chances with a formula that some people love and others hate, the Revlon shelf is right there—but if you end up liking that color, there’s a good chance you’ll eventually buy it in a more pigmented or sheerer, shinier or matte-er, formula. A formula that’s less mid, in other words.

That doesn’t sound like a very positive assessment, I’ll admit. But how many drugstore lipstick formulas have been around since the 1950s and, that whole time, managed to maintain decent quality across a dizzyingly broad range of colors? Revlon Super Lustrous might be the only one. I’ll always feel an affection for Super Lustrous lipsticks as my introduction to the makeup world. I’ll always love the sight of those circular labels lined up by color on the drugstore shelf. And I’ll always believe, on some level, that there’s no sight quite as beautiful as a pristine Revlon lipstick, even photographed in bad light on a crappy card table. The pure shot of color, the creamy gleam of nostalgia—what Yosemite redwood or Venetian palazzo can compete?

So when Revlon released twelve new Super Lustrous shades recently, I took interest. I’ve questioned Revlon’s business decisions before, but this one seems sound: instead of constantly launching and discontinuing new lipstick formulas, why not generate some new interest in their longest-lived formula? In fact, some of the new shades look like they could be relaunches, or at least approximations, of discontinued ones: Electric Melon, for instance, reminds me of Persian Melon from the old Moon Drops line, and Fire Peach evokes 1956’s Snow Peach, which Revlon re-released with four other vintage shades back in 2014.

Here are all twelve new shades at my local CVS:

After a few days of deliberation, I settled on Fire Peach, because this is the time of year when I start craving Easter-candy colors. Over the years, I’ve owned many bright, milky peach-coral lipsticks similar to Fire Peach: MAC Vegas Volt, Revlon Persian Melon, Urban Decay Streak, Revlon Mischievous, and, no doubt, a few others that I’m forgetting. Bright peach is not the most flattering lipstick color for my cool-toned skin; in fact, it might not even make the top fifty percent. But I love it, damn it, so I make it work.

In my experience, a bright peach needs some sheerness if it has any chance of harmonizing with my coloring instead of struggling against it. (That’s why I managed to use up Streak but got rid of Vegas Volt and Persian Melon.) Knowing that Revlon Super Lustrous lipsticks tend to be about seventy-five-percent opaque, I decided to take the risk and, armed with CVS coupons that gave me $4.50 off, buy Fire Peach earlier this month.

If this color doesn’t put you in the mood to buy an iced coffee and wander your neighborhood photographing blossoming trees, I don’t know what will.

This particular lipstick tube closes more securely—and is slightly harder to open—than the tubes of my other Super Lustrous lipsticks, but I’m not sure whether this is a deliberate change in the packaging or, more likely, a fluke in Revlon’s quality control. Otherwise, Fire Peach is a standard-issue Super Lustrous lipstick in every respect: satin finish, just-short-of-opaque pigmentation, scent-free and slightly moisturizing formula, longevity of a few hours. (I wouldn’t have put it past Revlon to mess with the Super Lustrous formula for this new release, just because.)

White-based lipsticks like Fire Peach have the tendency to cling to the dry patches in my lips, as you can see in the lip swatch below, but I can achieve relatively even color in two coats.

Here’s Fire Peach swatched with my other coral-peach lipsticks, all of which happen to be by Revlon. L-R: Super Lustrous in Kiss Me Coral, Fire Peach, and Glass Shine Lipsticks in Glaring Coral and Fire & Ice.

Since bright coral lipstick always makes me think of the turn of the 1960s, my first instinct with Fire Peach was to pair it with cool-toned eyeliner. Here I am wearing Urban Decay Mushroom, a metallic gray, along with a new mascara (elf Lash XTNDR, which I’m really liking so far, despite the goofy name), a very old blush (Sleek Life’s a Peach), and some moisturizer mixed with a small squirt of MAC Strobe Cream in Pinklite, because my winter skin needed a little extra glow.

And here’s Fire Peach with my first black eyeliner in years: Glossier No. 1 Pencil in Ink, which I bought at the Glossier Soho store last weekend (post to come about that, maybe). As always, I’m not convinced that black eyeliner works for me, but I plan to keep experimenting. Please excuse my rusty eyeliner skills (not that I ever possessed fantastic ones, lol).

In conclusion: well done, Revlon. Now just bring back the freaking Lip Butters.

P.S. Just for fun, here are all my other Super Lustrous reviews in chronological order, starting in 2014:

Mauvy Night

Cherries in the Snow

Black Cherry

Primrose

Fire and Ice

Pink Truffle (in the tragically short-lived Sheer sub-formula)

Dramatic

Pink Promise & Smoky Rose (one of my most popular posts of all time, for some reason)