RubyHue Lipstick Review: Paula's Choice Berry & Bright lip Crayon- Currant

Excuse my hyperbolic outrage but there is no excuse at all for shitty lipstick in this day and age, when even budget brands can achieve perfectly acceptable results.  And from what I gather, the Paula's Choice line isn't even cheap, which astounded me because I was thinking this had to be a single figure outlay situation.

Chromatically, Currant is a hard, cheap-looking plasticky red, tainted with that offensive 80's pinkishness that we seniors just could not escape back in the day, but my dislike isn't merely associative.  The shade is objectively gauche, especially in direct sunlight which really plays up its ugly monotonality.  It's the kind of thing Barbie would wear if she wanted to leave a tide mark on Ken's junk hump.  Pageant red.  Cosplay red.  Shudder.

​Bite Pomegranate seems fairly twinsy in the sunlit pics but note how the latter backs up the saturation with an appropriate level of opacity and tweaks it slightly warmer, creating a much more wearable and sophisticated shade.  I love Pomegranate and detest Currant, if that's enough anecdotal differentiation for you.

I don't know anything about Paula's Choice and to cut a short story even shorter, I don't give enough of a shit to research it.  I have somehow ambiently deduced that it's mid-end personality-based shiz blah blah blah headbutts table in rigid dribbling stupor.  

Do I sound unenthusiastic?  Because I am. Unethusiastic.  About Paula's Choice Berry & Bright lip crayon in Currant.  Which feels a bit strange because I haven't actively hated a lip product in quite a long time.  

​There is plenty to dislike, though, starting with the phrase Berry & Bright, which makes me emit cobra noises.  Currant is a totally inaccurate descriptor and I hate that too.  Also hate the fat, half-sparkly, busted-arse Xanadu-looking mofo of a crayon quite passionately and am unwilling to be seen with it in public.  

​If a fly-spotted yellowing plastic makeup stand in a crappy small town chemist circa 1985 could talk, it would say Paula's Choice Berry & Bright in a croaking smoker's baritone, and probably wipe its nose on its sleeve.

Currant goes on unpleasantly, building from icky-pink to Snow White (polyester version) red.  The thick kidney fat texture and persisting stickiness create a contact/transfer nightmare and feel like last night's cold chip grease stuck to your lips.  I will very occasionally tolerate a gruesome formula for the sake of hot colour payoff, but there's no gold at the end of this rainbow; you just feel like you can taste where the leprechauns were sitting.

If I absolutely had to say something nice, I could admit I was bracing for Currant to smell like wet dog and it did not.  The pencil winds up which means, well, less waste.  It doesn't bleed, I'll give it that.  

But no, you're not imagining things; there really are horrid knobby hentai-esque blobs of embedded wax (christ I hope that is wax) in the midst of the product.  They're hard and sort of scratchy.

And I don't care if this was a one-off production problem or characteristic formula issue because it was by no means the only thing I hated about this pencil.

Currant probably stays on for a long, long time but five mins was more than enough for me and I could never make it past the half hour mark before running for the tissues.  I don't know what possessed me to buy this execrable product (yes I do- someone was offloading it cheaply) but let my pain light your path to righteousness- if you're looking for blue-leaning raspberry red without the vulgarian factor, pick up ye olde MAC Red (just buy a primer), MAC Salon Rouge, Nars Red Lizard, Nars Charlotte or one of the Bite pencils (maybe Cranberry).

(L2R) MAC Russian red, Paula's Choice Currant, Bite Pomegranate, Nars Cruella,
​Nars Majella, MAC Red

*   More Lipstick Reviews: no one knows how to stop me   *

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