| MAC Whirl (The Matte Lip '15 Collection) might look like one of those fuck-me neutrals so heavily favoured by a certain Kalifornian clan of overstuffed, polymerised attentionwhores. You may have dismissed it for that reason. But it's not as porny or pleasing as it may appear.  |  |
While our coastal light is slightly blue-leaning in winter, the cool-toned image to the top right there is actually pretty representative of how Whirl appears on the lip. It looks like Velvet Teddy or Pander Me in the tube, but that's where the resemblance ends and it's not the cute warm nude I feared as I snapped the warmer shots. To my eye, you're looking at a neutral to very slightly cool taupe with river stone, ash and even distant violet in its DNA. Like the superfine silt that washes up around the grey cobbles in mountain waterways, if you've ever had the pleasure.
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So the warm-light tube shots here are quite a long way off-true. The cooler pic above left where a little bit of use is starting to rough up the surface is what you'll get on the lip. It's darker, odder, more complex and less friendly than you may be assuming, far more of a cross between dry drinking chocolate powder and dusty slate than peachy-marshamallow. To which I breathed a great sigh of relief, since I was looking for something like MAC Del Rio in a matte finish. Del Rio is warmer and more rosy, but the closest of all the nudie/neutrals I currently own.
 | Whirl is a difficult bitch to swatch in a meaningful way. < In natural indoor shade, the dirty/silty aspect prevails, crowding out the subtler hints of barely-there shady carnation and lilac-grey that are important contributors to the overall impression. So superimpose slightly funereal over what you're seeing here. In the warmer shot below right it is rendering too cardboard-brown. In reality it's almost a dead-on match for the tonality of my own dark, cool lips; if you're paler in the mouth you might get a bit of a fright at the level of contrast Whirl provides, and be conscious of the fact that it will almost certainly pull too ashy on the wrong skin. On the bright side, it doesn't amplify facial redness which is a bonus |
L2R (All MAC) Whirl, Riri Bad Girl, Pander Me, Taupe, Del Rio
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Evening light in the shot below gets us a little closer to the tonal truth. There seems to be a wide range of textures in these new MAC mattes and I can report that Whirl goes on quite smoothly and evenly, dries down to a true paper or suede-like finish and is waxy enough to leave a few lip creases naked after a while. That's no biggie if you're deeply-pigmented but might become an issue if you're not. It is 95% opaque, slightly buildable and I'm getting a sense of impending dryness/slight discomfort after an hour of wear.
Someone else might be able to achieve that apparently coveted cretinous inflatable jailbait look with Whirl, but I'm too cranky and too bitey for it to look insert cock here-ish. On me it looks adult and even austere, so don't be afraid of any imagined dumbification or associative toxicity with this shade- personal context is everything. Are you as glad as I am?
Postscript- I was going to pick up MAC Stone from the same collection, but I've seen it on a few other people now and ooooh... tough one to pull off. Approach with ten layers of caution. While it might be interesting in the bathroom mirror (and this is coming from someone with very broad tastes), I've yet to see it look like anything but scuffed arse and/or nasty footpath in outdoor lighting. Nasty footpath can be a perfectly legitimate thing but it should probably be a conscious decision, lol. Stone needs a very careful supporting look and a really narrow set of undertones. My advice- admire from a distance and invest elsewhere.
Someone else might be able to achieve that apparently coveted cretinous inflatable jailbait look with Whirl, but I'm too cranky and too bitey for it to look insert cock here-ish. On me it looks adult and even austere, so don't be afraid of any imagined dumbification or associative toxicity with this shade- personal context is everything. Are you as glad as I am?
Postscript- I was going to pick up MAC Stone from the same collection, but I've seen it on a few other people now and ooooh... tough one to pull off. Approach with ten layers of caution. While it might be interesting in the bathroom mirror (and this is coming from someone with very broad tastes), I've yet to see it look like anything but scuffed arse and/or nasty footpath in outdoor lighting. Nasty footpath can be a perfectly legitimate thing but it should probably be a conscious decision, lol. Stone needs a very careful supporting look and a really narrow set of undertones. My advice- admire from a distance and invest elsewhere.
L2R (All MAC) Whirl, Riri Bad Girl, Pander Me, Taupe, Del Rio
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