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5 Modern Takes on Brown Lipstick
Is brown lipstick making a comeback for fall? Perhaps… here are five more modern takes on brown (at least, to me) that switch it up by adding brown tones or changing the finishes. What are your favorite shades of brown from the past and present?
- Maybelline Touchable Taupe — a soft, muted rosy brown
- OCC Marion — a medium, rosy brown
- Too Faced Sweet Maple — a warm, plummy brown
- NARS Cythere — a metallic beige-brown
- NARS Deborah — a lightly glossy, reddish-brown
OCC Starling, and I just tried Bobbi Brown Uber Seude yesterday! I think the peach tones in Marion would suit me better though.
Nice! Maybe you could even mix Marion with Starling!
I really enjoy MAC Taupe lipstick, I think it looks great on just about everyone! It is also a great nude for darker skinned beauties.
Thanks so much for the suggestion!
Yes MAC Taupe is one of my faves! I am a darker skinned beauty 🙂
Did you see that Sepia one that MAC is about to release with the new matte ones? I loved it, it is SO 90’s! Should I get my eyebrows super thin and arched again? And wear a lot of pale powder on my face? LOL
It will be interesting to see more brown lipstick, because I think it can be really great (like a light pink, it can take some time to find the right one!)!
Too Faced Sweet Maple looks beautiful. Love those warm plummy browns.
Me too!
I love all these lip colours, they just look so flattering on me. For some reason these colours are are easier for me to wear than red lips. I always try to wear red, but it just never looks right.
At least you’ve found the color that does suit you 😀
I really digging that new nars lipstick 🙂 and also want to try the new trend 🙂
The only real brown I remember I have is
Estee Lauder pure color lipstick in shade FIG
which I refused to wear as it looks so 80s
You should wear it and give it an update by layering or mixing!
I did … in the middle of typing my comment which is my usual habit …
its not looking bad at allll 🙂
n yeah layering n mixing may help too 🙂
thank u dear
I love rosy browns! They seem to work really well with my complexion.. my favorite has to be Nars Tzigane! I also really liked one from Shiseido but thats discontinued now.. Bobbi Brown makes a lot of browny nudes!
Me too! Rosy browns are really easy for me to wear.
When I had green hair I was a big fan of Milani’s Teddy Bear, somehow it seemed to suit my fair skin with my hair that color. I haven’t worn it since but I may again soon. I loved the shade. And touchable taupe looks pretty interesting as well.
Definitely sounds like it’s time to pull it out again!
I’m not a fan of brown lippies, they tend to age me.
But Sweet Maple is very pretty !
My favourite texture is the Dior Addict Extreme.
Xoxo
Michelle
Hopefully one of the newer browns will work for you!
Something about browns just makes me shudder, I can get behind blues, purples almost anything… But brown..reminds me of my elementary school teachers who used to wear ONLY brown lip liner 🙁 different strokes for different folks though!
You gotta try some of the newer formulas and shades out there! They can be SO beautiful 🙂
Touchable Taupe looks perfect for fall. I really like it!
Such a great shade!
Wait a minute now, “don’t call it a comeback”. (lol)..For some of us chocolate girls who were grown in the 90’s, brown lippies have always been part of our basic collection. They never left or went out of style. Back in the day my brown favorites were Mac’s Chestnut lipstick/gloss which is now discontinued and Photo lipstick. Today my favorites include Mac’s Double Shot, Milani’s Teddy Bare (a must have IMO) and Maybelline’s Untainted Spice (my makeup bag staple).
I’m looking forward to them being more to the forefront – I feel like so many brands are scared to call a brown lipstick brown right now!
My favorite brown is actually OCC’s Sybil. Unfortunately they don’t sell the lip tar anymore but the pencil looks groovy. .
At least they have the pencil now, I guess!
Nars Bansar, Guerlain in Forever Brown and Bite in Musk or Glace.
I love brown, plum or darker mauve. Not afraid of plain brown. Used to have a brown crayon and with it doing my eye lining, shadow and lips. Add mascara and a bit of gloss. Hey, I love multitasking products, and if I don’t find them around, I can improvise them myself!
Great picks, Andrea!
NARS Deborah is the exact shade my mom wore in the late 70’s!
Ohh, how cool!
I don’t remember brown necessarily being a “trend”, but I did have a nice little stash I wore in the 90s. My go-to’s were L’Oréal Spice, Revlon Coffee Bean & Bali Brown, as well as a few others. Noone I knew/saw wore brown lipstick, but when I started wearing Coffee Bean, several of my classmates went out TN and bought it. Having at least one good brown in one’s stash is, IMO, essential; even if one doesn’t care to wear it on its own, a rich brown can tone down a shade that’s too bright, or deepen a too pale pink or nude.
Great point, Amy! It can be a nice way to mix/layer.
MAC Paramount would probably look good on a lot of folks. If you have darker skin it might appear reddish. On me (pale) it looks definitely brown, like milk chocolate. Thinking about getting Photo, too, or Taupe. I like brown lipstick. Makes me feel like Dana Scully 🙂
Awesome, Ginny! Rock ’em!
I need to try the Too Faced Sweet Maple – I love their formula so it’s about time that I get around to trying more shades!
It’s a nice shade!
NARS Cythere Is interesting, I think Too Faced Sweet Maple would be easier for me to wear, though. I have some brown toned lipsicks that are old, but still healthy. Maybe I should put them into rotation.
You should! At least one 😉
My favorite brownish lipstick has been Avon’s Instant Mocha forever. My mom wore it and I still wear it. It has been part of their permanent lipstick collection for almost 45 years. Avon has changed the formula of it many times, but the color has remained the same. I love brownish pink lip colors for fall and winter, thanks for sharing these colors. The NARS really is gorgeous, and even though I have a ton of lipsticks, I may have to add that to my collection.
Do you feel like the formula is better over time, too?
Yay – some browns! I love brown lipsticks. These look great, I really want that NARS Deborah. Have you tried the Portland Black Lipstick Company yet? They have seriously good lipsticks for an amazingly small amount of money. Their Bad Penny copper brown lipsticks is gorgeous.
I forgot to say that Milani makes some really fine brownish/copper lipsticks as well. Really great quality. Another oldie but goodie that has been resurrected by Revlon is the Sandstone colour as well. Reddish-brown lipsticks are my favourites.
Deborah is a really pretty color!
That NARS pencil is pretty. It certainly looks like the 90s lip is back. Most of these shades are warmer than I like for browns, but I love the cooler plummy browns from the 90s. I think it’s time to go digging through my stash for fall. I just hope we won’t be pairing them with that awful slightly bluish-gray eyeshadow that Angelina Jolie and all the A-listers were sporting during that time. I hated the two colors together.
Let’s hope that this time, they’re better 🙂
I like Sweet Maple the best of these, although I always find it difficult to know how a brown lipstick is going to look on me, LOL! My favourite (and only, really) brown lipstick is Bloom Charleston (I think it’s relatively similar to Sweet Maple 😉 )
They can be very chameleon like! I think undertones influence the beige/brown/olive tones more.
I wore my favorite today! Nars Autumn Leaves.
Pretty shade!
Sweet Maple’s very pretty! I also kind of like dark, chocolatey true browns like Eve Pearl Hot Chocolate. Literally looks like I smeared a melted Hershey’s bar very precisely on my lips, haha.
Nice!!
I like brown lipsticks, they are so pretty, especially on the lips 😀 I kinda avoived them before, though when i was 12 or 13 I had 2 or 3 lipsticks from my cousin and mom which were brown and I would wear them inside but never out. One was dark brown and one was mustardy brown(a multifunctional pen from avon, lol). Some classmates saw me with the dark one once when they came here to straighten their hair and were like “nooo, too dark” but I was weirdly fascinated with it(idk what brand/shade it was 🙁 sadly). I thought it was too dark, too, but liked it. More than red. At that time I hated anything with a red tint, even sheer red nivea lipbalms, I thought they make me look ugly. :)) I guess cool red ain’t that great for me but warm reds are nice. The mustard one looked funny, like diarrhea, but quite flattering. lol. My mom hated it :)) on her and on me, too, cause of the funny shade, but eh, what do they know? I want a brown lipstick 😀 or gloss. I only have a pinky-brown gloss and some copper lipsticks, but not brown.
I think it would be a great way to stand out now, being surrounded by fake tans and too pale/glitterry pink lips :)) lol
I hope you find a true brown this season that works for you, Artemis!
I like the colour of that lip tar more than I thought I would.
Woohoo! 🙂
MAC Hot Tahiti
MAC Shoc-o-late (Discontinued)
NYX Ginger Snap Butter Gloss
Revlon Pink Truffle or Fig Butters
Pink Truffle is a nice one!
I’ve always been into mauves, light browns and orangy caramel tones. And I can rebember pretty well when nobody liked my lipsticks because “they were too brown”. But since those are totally in now, everyone keep asking which lipstick I have on xD
Now I want to experiment more with medium browns. I’ve experienced that MAC doesn’t really have any medium brown in a matte/satin finish. Their more meium to dark browns tend to be very shimmery and frosty for some reason. The colour Taupe is close to what I’m looking for, but still pretty far away (if that makes any sense) xD
Haha! How funny 😉
What are some of your other favorites that you wear often?
I haven’t worn true “brown” lipstick in years, but I have to admit that browns are extremely flattering for me. They really make the green pop in my eyes. I used to LOVE Clinique Bronzed Leaf. I just looked it up and it’s still around. I think I need to buy it again! (Wonder if it’s still the same?) I also remember liking Revlon Toast of New York, but I recall it tasted and smelled bad. Forever-ago a brand called Lip Quencher has a brown shade I loved…can’t remember the name of it, but I think it was similar to Bronzed Leaf.
I’m very slowly treading the brown lip trend that is for Fall. Not a huge fan of it, but I mostly go for pinks so that may be why. I purchased the shade, “Two-Timer” in the Buxom Full-Bodied lipstick. Just swatched it in the store, and when I put it on at home I wasn’t crazy about it on me, but very pretty shade. I recently put it on again, and I liked it more than the first time. Wondering if it just depends on what other colors your going with, and what look your going for. I would describe it as a, peachy-brown.
I scrounged around my collection and I think that Rimmel’s 08 and Cover Girl’s Sultry are good choices too!
Since CG has the best drugstore browns I was going to buy Enamor because it looks gorgeous in Google pics, but CG discontinued it right before this trend started up again. They still have Enchant and a few others, so I might buy those– or check out the Queen collection.
Aww 🙁