Gradient (sometimes called "ombre") lips are popular for a reason: It gives your lips that just-bitten look. While we usually love a full matte lip, we also enjoy wearing something lighter and fresher from time to time, especially for summer.
In this edition of Cosmo.ph Beauty Wars, we’re putting the spotlight on two-tone lipsticks to give you options when you want to sport the Korean gradient lip trend.
Here are the products we checked out:
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Maybelline Lip Flush Bitten Lip in PK01
Price: P299
Where To Buy: SM Deparment Stores
What It Is: A tri-color lipstick that coats the lips in gradient hues. Its creamy formula hydrates and nourishes dry lips.
Why We Love It: Its three shades made a HUGE difference in helping us achieve the ~perfect~ gradient look. And because it was highly-pigmented, we got a true-to-color swatch in one swipe, making blending a lot easier. This is one drugstore lip product we're definitely going to be hoarding!
Benefit They're Real! Double The Lip in Criminally Coral
Price: P1,100
Where To Buy: Rustan's Department Stores, SM Megamall
What It Is: A lip liner and semi-matte lipstick that gives you a fuller-looking pout (think '90s!) in one swipe.
Why We Love It: A little goes a long way with this product—it's really creamy and opaque. But the combination of the colors didn't give our lips a gradient effect. Instead, it created a harsh "division" between the two shades, giving us flashbacks to when celebs would pair brown lip liner with nude lipstick. As a result, we just blended them together to create a custom shade!
Laneige Two Tone Lip Bar in Orange Blurring
Price: P1,200
Where To Buy: SM Megamall, SM Aura, Robinson Galleria, Robinsons Magnolia
What It Is: This famous lip product makes the gradient lip trend easier to achieve. Its rectanglular-shaped bullet makes it easy to apply as it smoothly glides on the curves of the lips.
Why We Love It: This ipstick did give our lips the gradient effect all Korean celebs love to wear. But the lippie's formula was a different story—it created quite a mess. Since the colors were on the sheer side, they didn’t work well for those of us with pigmented lips. The bullet was also super soft to the point that it began to "melt" while we were still putting it on! We're pretty sure that's not supposed to happen.
Artwork: Jico Joson
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