Well… it depends what you define as 'worth it'. As the category suggests, they are little pockets of luxury, worth buying because they're aesthetically beautiful and in turn can make you feel good and make a lovely addition to your collection. But that is all they are; nice to have but not really necessary and often probably not even very ideal when it comes to looking glam and getting dressed up.

And by 'luxury lipsticks' I'm referring to the uber high end brands who traditionally make luxury goods and not beauty products; more of them have recently expanded into the makeup category as a way to generate additional revenue. But it doesn't mean they are the best places to buy the kind of makeup you may need. 

Having said that, there is a difference between lipsticks you buy from the drugstore and the lipsticks you buy from an actual makeup brand. The formula is definitely better, you get a wider range of colours and the pigmentation and application is usually smoother. But drugstore lipsticks also have their place and some are very good.

I'm really picky with colours simply because I know my face and I know what suits me and what doesn't. And I rarely come across lipsticks I could just apply as it is; I'm constantly mixing colours together to get the right shade. The downside of this is I can never remember the combination of mix if ever I was to achieve a really pretty result! (Sort of pertains to the way I cook to be honest.) 

In summary, the worst lipstick was definitely Jimmy Choo as its appearance, scent and application was like a cheap market stall lipstick. The best was Carolina Herrera; it glides on so creamily, is highly pigmented and has such a beautiful finish. 

So in no particular order...

Hermès lipstick

£58 - £62

Hermès beauty have a very limited selection of colours in their lipsticks. I wasn't able to find one that I really liked and would wear regularly, so chose an experimental colour which I thought I could wear occasionally.

In true Hermès fashion, the packaging and presentation is so beautiful. The lipstick itself is weighted so it feels substantial, and has a beautiful gold emblem at the end of the cap which is just the right shade of gold (not too vulgar or not too antique). It comes in a little pouch which is nestled in a Hermès lipstick box and then bagged in the classic Hermès orange bag. A real treat. 

They're also refillable so you could buy different lipstick colours for the same lipstick holder. Out of the satin and the matte range, I opted for the matte as I don't often wear satin lipsticks. 

However, even in matte it applied with a really glossy texture and didn't dry into a full matte finish. I wasn’t a fan of its application, no matter how many times I layered it up the intensity of the colour just didn’t come through well.

Louboutin lipstick

£73

I have to say my perspective of Louboutin as a brand has completely changed. I went from thinking it was desirable, like most people do, to now seeing it as being incredibly cheap and tacky (I recall one of their shoe designs as part of one of their collections were so cheaply manufactured. Not to mention their unimaginative designs in recent years which are nothing special). What’s more, if you buy from them directly, they have the worst customer service experience I have ever encountered from a luxury brand; you only have to read reviews from the amount of people who have had trouble getting through to someone and the painful process of getting a refund / exchange. If you must buy their products, do so from a third party like a department store. 

I digress (!) my opinion of the brand aside, when it comes to the Louboutin lipstick I would say it is fairly average. It’s packaging was by far the most excessive and luxurious. It came in a beautiful red plastic bag, covered in red tissue paper and the lipstick itself nestled inside a black box like the kind jewellery comes in, which was further nestled inside a red origami style box.

I love the shape of the lipstick itself although the gold ribbon at the end can get quite annoying. It’s also a shame that they don’t provide any kind of mechanism for the lipstick to be able to stand up on your vanity in the way that they have the lipsticks planted on display.

The formulae and application of the lipstick is quite forgettable, on par with Hermès but better than Jimmy Choo’s. It isn't bad but it’s not the greatest. Can't say it's highly pigmented either, you need a good few strokes to get the colour through.

Jimmy Choo lipstick

£50

The Jimmy Choo lipstick was the worst luxury lipstick by far. It's a shame because it did look beautiful; the lipstick itself is also weighted like Hermès so it feels quite special.

But it comes across as incredibly cheap. It has a cheap scent, like the kind you get from cheap lipsticks you buy for a couple of pounds at a market. It equally applies that way, with a lot of difficulty because it's not very pigmented. Additionally, the packaging also looks incredibly cheap; the kind of packaging you’d expect a budget perfume from back in the 90s to have.

Like the Hermès, the application was more glossy than matte and more subtle than intense.

Carolina Herrera lipstick

£74

As mentioned above, this was my favourite with one of the best formulas. It is also the most fun of all lipsticks and yet it still manages to retain a sense of luxury without it being gimmicky. 

You can essentially build your own lipstick from a beautiful selection of patterned caps and like the Hermès lipstick, Carolina Herrera’s are refillable so you can buy multiple colours and put various other shades in the same lipstick cap. The other fun add-ons are like adding a tassel, charms consisting of a letter and coloured beetles which go around a thick keyring, so your lipstick can either be worn around your neck or clip on to anything (why you’d ever want to wear it around your neck I have no idea).

As all these pieces come in separate packaging, either the salesperson can build the lipstick for you or you can do it yourself, it isn’t really packed or presented in a special way as the Hermès or Louboutin. However, they do have a beautiful selection of patterned tissue paper which complements some of the patterns of the lipstick caps.

Upon one glance, the texture looks highly pigmented and grainy, more so than the three lipsticks above. And it's substance is definitely true to form; it did apply with intense colour and a lovely creamy texture giving your lips a beautifully polished, matte finish. And I didn’t even need to apply another colour on top! I wore it on my baby shower and loved how it came out in pictures, a beautiful orange/red (colour no. 93171)…

Most of my day-to-day lipsticks are from actual makeup and beauty brands like Ofra and Charlotte Tilbury (selectively. As I also think over half of what the beauty industry sells is completely unnecessary and not very effective). Luxury brands which usually make clothes and leather goods are moving into beauty to expand their category (the new Valentino beauty range looks so gorgeous). But the reality is, some of the best makeup products are still from the original make-up and beauty brands. But high end makeup has its own special place as the designs and whole concept around it make it feel so special. 

Dolce and Gabbana's beauty range case in point…

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