 Flashed Indoors: L, Fixed On Drama, R, All Fired Up. |  Unflashed Indoors: L, Fixed On Drama, R, All Fired Up. |
I do know that not everyone's life revolves around lipstick but I'm a shallow bitch so let's just embrace yet another MAC review, because it's happened, you're reading it and that's something we're both going to have to deal with. Retro Matte Collection. I've been breathing heavily at the screen for some time now waiting for these shades to wing their way from the USA courtesy of Shezza, my ever-resourceful lippy pimp and forsooth, they have arrived.
I really wanted All Fired Up due to my fuchsia problem (I can even spell it nowdays) but flip-flopped about Fixed On Drama because I didn't know if I absolutely required another vintage-y dirty red. But let's cut to the chase and take a look at them, shall we?
All Fired Up is a very matte (think Ruby Woo) rich, intense fuchsia with decent if not perfect colour payoff and not a chance in hell of migration or bleeding. It is warmer than Full Fuchsia or GAT as you can see below, much warmer than Show Orchid or Magenta lip pencil, and thusly more universally flattering. Colour-wise, anyway- a word of warning here about the total on-face effect; not everyone's going to be able to pull off this sort of super flat, almost cartoon/graphic look. It looks cute swatched, but keep that look at meeee effect in mind when dumping the whole range in your cart. Like I said, very, very matte.
Do I like the formula? Yes and no. Pigmentation is typically off the scale but I feel MAC should have addressed the extreme dryness issue by now. Sticks like Party Parrot aren't this texturally murderous, after all. I'm glad to own it because it's almost everything I wanted Party Parrot to be, and under something like Full Fuchsia, All Fired Up will be a truly all-day pink-bomb. It gets my overall seal of approval.
Fixed On Drama I wasn't sure about initially. Chromatically, it's less ashy and dead on my very pigmented lips than on the back of my hand, but it's not exactly what I was expecting. Beside it, Sin and Diva look positively lurid but there is something about this shade that's slowly growing on me as I check the mirror for the 156th time. It has a muted, almost coffee-bean aspect that makes it more reserved than its vampier cousins; Fixed On Drama is cooler, more platonic than a lot of them. I think the term I'm looking for is 'grown up'. It's great with red hair and pumps up the green in my eyes. It's even quite possibly safe for work unless you're labouring under some blanket anti-glamour fatwa. On the downside, I'm not crazy about its pigmentation, which is an odd thing to say about a matte; it's a little thinner than All Fired Up- this means you can push the colour around and bunch it up, and it's a dry mofo, that's for sure. I don't regret its acquisition since I really didn't have anything like it after all.
*EDIT- after a few months of struggling with this shade I can affirm that it is indeed a difficult bitch- drying and patchy. The colour's pretty unique though, and that's the only reason I'm persisting with it.
So there's no unqualified love for these Retro Mattes; they're going to be too much for some who've been sucked in by the purdy colours. And MAC seems to be yanking our dicks over which ones will stay in the permanent range, so if you see something you like, grab it before it's $60 on bloody Ebay.
I really wanted All Fired Up due to my fuchsia problem (I can even spell it nowdays) but flip-flopped about Fixed On Drama because I didn't know if I absolutely required another vintage-y dirty red. But let's cut to the chase and take a look at them, shall we?
All Fired Up is a very matte (think Ruby Woo) rich, intense fuchsia with decent if not perfect colour payoff and not a chance in hell of migration or bleeding. It is warmer than Full Fuchsia or GAT as you can see below, much warmer than Show Orchid or Magenta lip pencil, and thusly more universally flattering. Colour-wise, anyway- a word of warning here about the total on-face effect; not everyone's going to be able to pull off this sort of super flat, almost cartoon/graphic look. It looks cute swatched, but keep that look at meeee effect in mind when dumping the whole range in your cart. Like I said, very, very matte.
Do I like the formula? Yes and no. Pigmentation is typically off the scale but I feel MAC should have addressed the extreme dryness issue by now. Sticks like Party Parrot aren't this texturally murderous, after all. I'm glad to own it because it's almost everything I wanted Party Parrot to be, and under something like Full Fuchsia, All Fired Up will be a truly all-day pink-bomb. It gets my overall seal of approval.
Fixed On Drama I wasn't sure about initially. Chromatically, it's less ashy and dead on my very pigmented lips than on the back of my hand, but it's not exactly what I was expecting. Beside it, Sin and Diva look positively lurid but there is something about this shade that's slowly growing on me as I check the mirror for the 156th time. It has a muted, almost coffee-bean aspect that makes it more reserved than its vampier cousins; Fixed On Drama is cooler, more platonic than a lot of them. I think the term I'm looking for is 'grown up'. It's great with red hair and pumps up the green in my eyes. It's even quite possibly safe for work unless you're labouring under some blanket anti-glamour fatwa. On the downside, I'm not crazy about its pigmentation, which is an odd thing to say about a matte; it's a little thinner than All Fired Up- this means you can push the colour around and bunch it up, and it's a dry mofo, that's for sure. I don't regret its acquisition since I really didn't have anything like it after all.
*EDIT- after a few months of struggling with this shade I can affirm that it is indeed a difficult bitch- drying and patchy. The colour's pretty unique though, and that's the only reason I'm persisting with it.
So there's no unqualified love for these Retro Mattes; they're going to be too much for some who've been sucked in by the purdy colours. And MAC seems to be yanking our dicks over which ones will stay in the permanent range, so if you see something you like, grab it before it's $60 on bloody Ebay.
unflashed natural daylight: L 2 R- Sin, Diva, Fixed on Drama, All Fired Up, Full Fuchsia, Girl About Town.
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