I got lucky at a sample sale and bought some fancy lipstick from French brand La Bouche Rouge
I have been intrigued by La Bouche Rouge for a while now, unsurprising given my fondness for red lipstick, and any bit of passing ooh-la-la that allows me to indulge in a #BeMoreFrench moment.
Imagine my delight then, when I found La Bouche Rouge refills and refillable leather cases available for purchase at February’s BESTIR Beauty, Makeup and Wellbeing sample sale.
I snapped up one La Bouche Rouge refillable case for a tenner, and two lipstick refills for £5 each.
Then I got caught up in work and the daily grind, and completely forgot about them.
Thank all the gods that Nancy wrote her excellent piece on Sheer Reds for Summer (which you can and should read here if you haven’t already, it’s really good!) because that reminded me I still had these products to try out.
I’d bought two La Bouche Rouge refills (Rouge 21 Mat and Folie) and one lipstick holder figuring that with any luck, one of the two colours would look nice on me and could go into the smart case. I assumed that the other refill would be usable as a lipstick without requiring a case to house it, and if it wasn’t the right shade for me I could pass it on to a friend.
My favourite way to try a new lipstick is on my un-made up face. Consider this a of a content warning that the picture that follows will not be one of poised, impeccable beauty!
As you can see, Folie is a bright and pretty colour, but not right for me. It has a lot of orange in the red, which is rarely the best look on anyone that’s smoked for three decades. Glides on, feels great, and lasts a good long time before fading though.
Folie is the swatch closest to my wrist. You can see that the Rouge 21 Mat swatch (closer to my chunky knit cardigan sleeve) is softer in tone: deeper and darker … so how would it look on the lips?
It looks like this! I really like Rouge 21 Mat. It looks kind of juicy in the photo above, not as flat as I expect a matte to look. It is matte, but it’s such a strong, bright colour that it doesn’t have the slightly shrinking, china doll effect that darker matte reds have on me. It’s non-drying and stays comfortable all day, with a nice even fade, and I can blot it right down until it becomes more of a stain and it looks good that way too.
We have a Winner!
La Bouche Rouge Le Rouge 21 Mat is the keeper, the fancy lipstick that gets to be removed from its smart little cardboard tube and transferred to the leather case.
I recommend this product because …
La Bouche Rouge lipstick feels and looks good on the lips, is beautifully presented, and the packaging works.
It’s super-easy to pop the refill in and out of the leather case, and it doesn’t wobble around once it’s in there. The top and bottom of the leather case are magnetised – good to know if you’re the kind of person (comme moi) that leaves a lipstick loose in your bag, then scrambles for your cigarette lighter like a terrier – you run no risk of accidentally thumbing the lid off your La Bouche Rouge in pursuit of a nicotine hit.
The mirror on the base of the case gives you a quick and discreet way to see if you’ve smeared your La Bouche Rouge all over the place whilst indulging in a quick snog with a passing sailor or seller of French onions or similar.
But that’s not the only mirror – there’s a secret one!
Should you need to touch up your lipstick, you can use your fighting hand to wield the bullet and hold the cap in your other hand. Peep down inside the cap and you’ll find it’s mirrored too! Making it perfectly simple to touch up your pout should you find yourself in a rustic setting with no reflective surfaces to hand, or, simply want to show off your lip-painting skills to the general public like the fancy thing you are.
Bravo, La Bouche Rouge: your refillable case (made from leather off-cuts, as this is a brand that prides itself on sustainability) combines aesthetics and practicality in perfect harmony.
If sustainability is important to you (and you aren’t a product tart like me, who frequently has her head turned by lipsticks across the price spectrum) I think La Bouche Rouge has created a product satisfying enough to commit to, and has a colour range extensive enough to keep a regular purchaser interested for years.
Regular lipstick prices are getting very high these days, have you noticed?
I can accept high prices when the brand is independent or niche: I find it much harder to swallow when global brands like Chanel are asking me to fork over £40 for a standard lipstick.
Bearing in mind that lipstick used to be the cheap feel-good pick up of choice in times of downturn or recession, the race to price a tube of pigment as though we are all 1%-ers or aspire to be filthy rich makes me queasy.
Presumably, these price increases are intended to keep out the impoverished riff-raff and ensure that the customer that can afford £40 for a high end, but nonetheless mass market lipstick feels special and a little bit exclusive.
This kind of monetary gatekeeping is a bit vulgar, don’t you think? And I wonder if it might have the unintended consequence of raising demand for interesting and less well known brands like La Bouche Rouge. I hope so.
Find La Bouche Rouge here and international stockists here
La Bouche Rouge is priced at:
£22 for a refillable leather case (and you can pay an extra £9 to have it monogrammed, if you have the kind of initials that monogram nicely, and want to be extra fancy)
£36 for a lipstick (excellent range of colours, matte and satin finishes, with interesting names and striking red packaging. I would have been quite happy to use my La Rouge Bouche without the refillable leather case, and the lipsticks look even prettier now that they’re clothed in red, not white.)
Are you feeling super-fancy? Or maybe on a quest to recreate a particular lip colour from decades ago? La Bouche Rouge offer a made to measure service too – details here
La Bouche Rouge offer more than just lipstick, so I recommend checking out their whole site!
Important to remember that the products I’m writing about in this post came from a sample sale, so they aren’t of the moment. La Bouche Rouge filed for bankruptcy in the summer of 23, and is now owned by Beauty Brands Global. I am very interested to see how the brand develops.
Want more details on that Bestir sample sale? Find them here on instagram, and look out for a post coming soon covering some other interesting beauty bargains I found there!
Ethical Stuff
There are no affiliate links in this post.
This post is not sponsored or paid for, and nor was it expected or the content directed by La Bouche Rouge or Bestir.
Prices correct at the time of writing.
