This Makeup Hack Will Transform Your Favorite Liquid Lipstick

Up until now, I was pretty sure the super-matte, super long-wearing liquid lipsticks were one trick ponies. Some makeup items can be used in multiple ways, or create multiple effects. But matte liquid lipsticks pretty much do one thing and look one way: You swipe them on, they shrink-wrap indelible pigment onto your lips, and when you're done, you scrub them off. (Which is a process that takes 15 minutes and every makeup remover/wipe/sandblaster you have in your bathroom.) But at Philosophy Di Lorenzo Serafini's Spring 2018 show in Milan, makeup artist Tom Pecheux showed us that you can transform a matte liquid lipstick with one simple hack.

Pecheux chose M.A.C. Retro Matte Liquid Lip Color in Feels So Grand for the show, painting it on the models' lips and blurring the edges with a cotton bud. Once the pigment fully dried, he then topped the lips with clear lip gloss. "It has a completely different feeling than if we used a red-colored lip gloss," said Pecheux.

"This specific lipstick [we're using] is very inky and very matte, so it kind of leaves a stain, especially with how I'm applying it," said Pecheux, who dabbed the liquid formula on the center of the mouth and blended it onto the rest of the lips with a separate brush. "When it dries, it not only leaves behind the lipstick, but also a stain, so it feels like the lipstick becomes part of your lips, whereas a colored gloss just sits on top of them. It's the same feeling as when you apply foundation and powder and dry blush, versus applying foundation and cream blush and the two creams melt together on your skin."

What this means in non-makeup artist speak — and Pecheux fully admitted that maybe it's only him who can see a difference between a stain topped with a clear gloss and a red gloss — is that the glossy color didn't look heavy or sticky or stamped onto the mouth. And seeing the look up-close and in the flesh, it did have a very cool juicy, 3-D effect that you could never get with an opaque and tinted gloss formula. The model's lips almost looked like they had been stained with the juice of a popsicle. Or, if you remember what a Ring Pop is, they had the same crystalline finish to them — sparkly, slightly sheer but not, and seriously just as sweet.

Discover more backstage beauty hacks below:

1. Pastel Makeup Looked Incredibly Sexy at Alberta Ferretti Spring 2018

2. I Just Discovered the Easiest Contouring Trick Ever From Tom Pecheux at No. 21 Spring 2018

3. Fendi Put Mermaid Hair on Kendall, Gigi, and Kaia Gerber

Watch Kim Kardashian, our October 2017 cover star, answer interview questions while getting an incredibly relaxing foot massage: