 | I was lucky enough to have a misty autumn morning in which to take these photos, so if you're thinking of picking up any of these LE shades, please have a good look. In Southern Hemisphere filtered daylight, they've rendered pretty true, especially the individual bullet shots. I took some trouble over them because many of us will have to source these from pricey resellers (as I did), thanks to MAC's unfortunate blink/miss issue policy. Which seems to defy even commercial logic, but what are you gonna do? |
| Overpay like a sucker, that's what. Bitterness aside (and I'm being a bit dramatic here because we get stung $40NZ for regular MAC lippies and I paid around the same for these from my own magical reseller), these recent releases are all very nice and (mostly) well worth tracking down. Head in the Clouds is the least indispensible, IMO, simply because it's really just a frosty Lady Bug and you don't need to be paying over the odds for something like that.  |  Check out the image directly above. In all these pics it's L2R: MAC Head in the Clouds, Toying Around, Glam. I fully flashed this, so while it looks more yellow than natural daylight, this is what they might look like in an indoor/work setting which is presumably where most of you are headed. You can really see the fuchsia in Glam here, which is helpful since it looks straight red in many online images. |
| HEAD IN THE CLOUDS (LE, Frost): I said it before- HITC reminds me of MAC Lady Bug with pearl and microshimmer. They're not identical on the hand but on the lips, the effect is very close colour-wise, Head in the Clouds being 5% pinker than LB's sheer tomato red. I love Lady Bug in theory, but its fugitive Lustre formula drives me batshit; I can't even get it onto the inner portion of my lips most days and it lasts all of 20 minutes when I do. HITC is much more stable and clingy, partly due to the frost content. To the peeps who've said they can't see any frost, I'd suggest an eye test, since it rates as a 60-70% type shimmer situation if you ask me, a little behind something like MAC Fresh Moroccan. In fact, it's between that and a MAC Pearlglide eye pencil if you're familiar with those. It's a sofusstikated kind of disco, though, almost Guerlain-esque; finely milled, well-distributed and flattering on the lip, giving a semi-sheer hit of reddish strawberry with a plumping lustre and the ability to add dimensional amendment to shades you might be bored with. But it's nowhere near as vampy as it looks in the tube and to a red fiend like myself, it's fairly wimpy. Pretty, not sexy; in fact, it's even safe for work : / Hell's bells! |  |
 GLAM (LE, Matte) Can I just say something really quickly? Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! That is the sound of someone overly-concerned with lipstick losing their mind in a good way. Oh Glam, where have you been all my life? I missed you the first time round and I always knew there was something not right with the world. Glam is a buttery, one-pass-heaven über matte stuffed to the gills with neutral crimson-soaked fuchsia and it completes me. Get MAC Cherry lip pencil together with Fuchsia lipmix, play around with them and you're very close. Unbelievably even, deeply-saturated colour meets non-parching or clumping matte texture so why in the living hell did they discontinue this paragon? Only one (okay, two) words of caution; if you're staring at the tube willing it to be as Snow-Whitey as it looks in that state, give it up now because I wouldn't call it red at all. It really, truly is a deep, dark, badarse fuschia, even if it appears more like MAC Red in situ. If you look at the swatch below, at the very top of the Glam stripe you'll see its true on-the-lip colour. And it stains, like all fuchsias. I suggest you find it and buy it, regardless of skin tone because I can't imagine anyone (with guts) who couldn't pull this off. It's a lot of look, but that's the whole point. | TOYING AROUND (LE, Amplified): Fellow cool/ heavily pigmented lip-owners will feel my coral-deprived pain. I love corals but can't wear most of them unless they are sheer, because matte or demi-matte versions tend to bunch their drier pigments and over my dark lips, that looks as shitty as the shittiest thing you can imagine. Like you have a neon disease. Not good. My practical inability to wear coral is especially galling since I have the kind of big white spooky face that makes it look especially weird and sideways, which I enjoy. I got rid of Party Parrot for the abovementioned reason and with much regret, because the shade itself was the shizniz, if not the finish. Toying Around is basically a PParrot redux in a kinder formulation- Amplified, which is has proven far easier to actually wear rather than just gaze longingly at. The slippier base means you can finger-smudge and graduate it for a more flattering look, reconciling it with your own lip colour rather than fighting it. It dries down to a medium to low sheen satin finish, stays put for around 4 hours, sheering out gradually, without settling into too many lines or bleeding. Yay! Both thumbs up for this guy.  |
Camera sensors just don't read red and fuchsia very well, so remember- it's the latter, not the former. Trust me.
 L2R: MAC Russian Red, Head in the Clouds, Lady Bug, Glam, Girl About Town, Toying Around, Hot Tahiti. |  L 2 R: MAC Head in the Clouds, Glam, Toying Around. |
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