Why I Wear Red Lipstick


Searching for the Perfect Lipstick Shade


(Dedicated to my mother who passed away in 1997)

            
This is how you become obsessed with red lipstick:

             It starts with watching your mother at her dressing table.  She is leaning over the mirror, wearing a red dress.  Chiffon.  She is putting on the Revlon.  The Fire and Ice or the Cherries in the Snow.  Your mother—she looks like Marilyn Monroe, all blonde and soft and curvy.  She is getting ready to go out to a cocktail party.  It is 1961 and you are living in the suburbs where everything is clean and fresh and new.  These are the Camelot years.  You know for certain that your mother will be home from the party, sometime past midnight, and you will inhale the strange, yet familiar scent of tobacco, the cool night air and stale Chanel No. Five.  She will lean over and give her a whispered kiss, leaving a red imprint on your left cheek like a smudged rosebud.

            The next thing you know, it’s 1970 and nude is in.  Free love and the sexual revolution.  You go down to the Five and Dime and steal lipsticks with Henrietta Berman, your new friend, who is from Israel and dark and well-developed for her age and oh yeah, a little bit dangerous.  You steal a tube of Misty Nude.  It’s a no-brand lipstick that comes in a plastic leopard case.  You want it for the leopard and you want it for the name.  That’s what really gets you.  Misty.  Nude.  That’s what you’d like to be, only you don’t even know it yet.  And that’s exactly why your mother disapproves.  You say “why?  What’s wrong with it?”  You put some on your lips and show her.  “See, you can hardly tell I’m even wearing lipstick,” you say.  “That’s not the point,” she says.  “It’s the name.”  Misty.  Nude.
           
            But you know it’s more than just the name.  It’s the idea of something that is so beyond her.  Something that is so much more subtle and secretive than the color red.  The subterfuge of it.  The idea that you could go out in the nude, meet a hippie, make love and run away to a commune.  It is subversive, this Misty Nude.

            Years pass.  You graduate from college and go to London.  No, not Swinging London.  It’s way past that.  It’s the decadent-you missed the party-we have a hangover London.  1977.  You meet a girl named Brigitte.  She’s a photographer from Vienna.  On a fellowship at the St. Martins School of the Arts.  She likes to take pictures of you dressed up in vintage, leaning against a lamppost in Highgate Park, near the cemetery where Karl Marx is buried.  She photographs you looking soulful with beatnik-style black eyeliner and a black beret.  Brigitte wears matte red lipstick.  It’s from Biba, because that is the only place to go shopping, unless you just want cheap knickers in which case Marks ‘n Sparks is fine.  For everything else, there’s Biba’s and oh yeah, the flea market in Kensington.  

New York City 1978.  Someone invented disco while you were away and now you’ve got some catching up to do.  You find yourself searching the Duane Reade for something that shimmers, but your heart isn’t in it.  You walk the gauntlet at Bloomies letting the beauty advisors spritz you with White Linen.  You are in search of the perfect red, but somehow nothing will do.  It isn’t the era for red.  And by 1984, you’re actually wearing white lipstick from Estee Lauder.  Studio 54 has closed and your hairdresser is canceling appointments because of a “blood disorder” and there seems like there’s nothing to do but move to L.A. and go to film school. 

And there in Hollywood, you find Revlon’s Love that Red.  In 1992 it’s retro and out of style, but you’re in your movie star phase and you really don’t give a damn.  You’re obsessed.  One night, you come home from a Marilyn Monroe film festival at U.C.L.A. and you get a phone call.  Your mother has cancer.  And all you can think about is how you have come full circle.  You’ve forgotten about being Misty Nude.  You have surrendered to the red, and your mother’s kiss, after all.

Last week, you found yourself on a subway in New York City.  The number six train.  The Lexington line.  You are sitting across from a twenty-something girl with bleached blonde hair.  She is wearing fishnets and vintage Frye boots, a faux fur coat and yes, bright red lipstick.  She is listening to her ipod, not noticing you, but you can’t help it--you lean forward and say excuse me, but where did you get your lipstick? 

She smiles at you as if she has met the ghost of her future self, and she
Tells you, Duane Reade.  It’s really cheap.  It’s called Radiant Red from Jordana. 
            You go there immediately.  And for a dollar ninety-nine, you buy a little bit of magic.


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25 comments:

  1. Oh, this is wonderful. What a beautiful, evocative post!

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    1. Thank you so much! I am a big fan of your blog, and so honored that you read my essay!

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  2. This is beautiful. Makes me think of my own red lipstick story. Thank you!

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    1. Merci beaucoup, Amy. I can see you're a red lipstick kind of gal--very special! Love, Jamie

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  3. This is beautiful. Makes me think of my own red lipstick story. Thank you!

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  4. Beautiful essay, Jamie! Thank you! Now I shall go to the CVS or Rite-Aid in search of Radiant Red.

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    1. Dear Polly--Thank you for the comment on my red lipstick essay and sending you love and warmth during this sad times for Paris. xo Jamie

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  5. what a beautiful homage to your mother. easy to see she has passed her penchant for elegance, verbal and physical, on to you!

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  6. Bonjour Jamie!! I loved this essay so much! I am a red lipstick girl forever! Right now I am wearing Chanel's "Dimitri" which is a perfect summertime red! I am currently enrolled in Slim, Chic, and Savvy with Tonya Leigh! I loved your interview with Tonya! I am definitely a girl who is French Kissing her life in her red lipsticks!!! XXOO

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    1. Bonjour, Regina--My apologies for taking so long to comment on your comment. I hope you enjoyed Tonya Leigh's Slim, Chic and Savvy class. She is wonderful! Sending you love and light, mon amie, Jamie

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  7. Dear Jamie,
    I cannot believe that I have not noticed this before on your site.
    It is a beautiful story...I have my red lipstick that I purchased at the Monoprix when I was in Paris on your fabulous Ooh La La Tours...it is by Maybelline and called Pleasure Me Red!
    Do you still wear Radiant Red?

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  8. Loved this Jamie - it' made me elate, cry and be happy to have learned from you xo

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    1. Oh, Beth--Merci beaucoup! I am so sorry to be replying so late to your lovely comment. I hope you also enjoy my latest book, Parisian Charm School! Love, Jamie

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  9. Merci! Beau storie, je suis joyeux! Nostalgique et par parfait l'occasion.

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  10. http://www.girlnextdoorfashion.net/2012/04/filofax-blogger-style-off.html

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  11. What a delightful story. I can relate a lot, my mother had exquisite style. She was a French teacher, so I am lucky to be fluent in French since I was four. I discovered your site thanks to Shannon Ables´ podcast, and just bought your book, Parisian Charm School.

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    1. Bonjour Alina! Thank you so much for your sweet note here. I'm so glad you found me through Shannon Ables! Isn't she wonderful! How wonderful to be raised by a stylish French teacher for a mom. You are so lucky! And thank you for buying Parisian Charm School. I hope you love it. Bonne Année! Jamie

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  12. I love this. I have hoarded away some discontinued Chanel lipstick called "Ballet Russe" -- a dark red that is a little too harsh for me these days. But I wear it when I sit down to write (I write a lot about dance).

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  13. I am truly so very moved by this writing. I am very much on a similar personal journey. The sensibility of your words; the beautiful sentiments..palatable. Thank you. I enjoyed the journey. Namaste.

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  14. What a beautiful essay about the mother/daughter connection, the power of lipstick, and your life journey. Thank you. I learned of you through Tranquility du Jour's Kimbelry Wilson.

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