REVIEWSDAY: L'Oreal Paris Blake's Pure Red Color Riche Lipstick

I think I might have found the best red lipstick ever. Just saying. I have been dying to try the L'Oreal Paris Collection Exclusive Color Riche Pure Reds (what a mouthful) range for so so long, and I finally got round to swatching them in Superdrug and buying one, and I can't believe I waited so long. I bought Blake's Red, and it is perfect.

I still haven't sorted my office Christmas party outfit (see the dilemma at the end of this post) but at least I now know what makeup I will be wearing, because this lipstick is made for Hollywood glamour. Which is pretty appropriate for something created for/by Blake Lively.

The range features four different shades of red, in the hope that there will be one that suits every skintone. Obviously I can't speak for every skintone, but I certainly found one that suits me. One word of warning though, would be to swatch them and choose yourself which one you think suits you from that, rather than relying on the models. I assumed that Julianne Moore's would be best for me, given that she is pale with red hair, but in fact that was far too bright, and the red from the tanned and blonde Blake Lively looked like it would suit me much better, as indeed it did. The other two are slightly darker shades, for Eva Longoria and Liya Kebede, and I would definitely recommend swatching all four, whatever your skintone. I may well be testing the darker two again to see if I can get away with one of those as well, because this is such a good lipstick.

I can't tell you how this wears over the whole day because I haven't had time to try it out over that long yet, but as a test I did put it through cake and tea (the things I do for you guys...) and wow, it did not come off at all. I did a fairly thorough application, admittedly, but I was only able to put it on so well in the first place because it's so good, if that makes sense... I did one layer, blotted, second layer, second blot, third layer and final blot, and it didn't cake up at all or anything. Normally with matte lipsticks, this many layers would be quite cakey and on dry lips could start looking pretty awful, but this is just the velvety-est (totally a word) lipstick ever. I have tried a lot of lipsticks, and this really is seriously good. It is the softest velvety matte, but it is just not drying at all, and it rubs in well, so you can really get it 'deep', as it were, which really helps with staying power.

One teeny tiny issue I had is that it bled a tiny bit, but this is purely because I am lazy and didn't use lipliner, so it really is so easily fixable. It is such a good lipstick that you don't need to lipline all over your lips or anything, just a quick draw round the outside should be fine, so this is really barely an issue at all. Also the super pure red colour means it should be so easy to find a matching one.

All hail L'Oreal for creating the perfect red lipstick.