Bite Beauty has this knack for pleasantly surprising me. Every time they come out with a new collection of lip products I end up having this cute little smile on my face due to their inventive ideas. They have this habit of turning on a dime to produce something different and very unique every time they launch a collection – whether they’re coming up with monthly astrology-based lip colours, or putting out spice-inspired lipsticks (seriously cannot get enough of those), or, like with today’s posted, putting out a bunch of lip glosses inspired by coffee – suffice to say, Bite has a little something special for everyone and you never know what they’re going to put out next!

The French Press Lip Gloss collection is a “a limited-edition collection of coffee-inspired lip glosses that serves up indulgently creamy shine in warm, java hues.” The formula actually uses coffee butter (is that a THING? AND TELL ME WHERE I CAN BUY IT – I feel like I need to spread this on toast!) and arabica cold press coffee oil! And of course, it wouldn’t be Bite if it wasn’t handcrafted right here in Toronto and made with natural ingredients.

While I have not fully succumbed to the gloss trend that everyone else seems to be happily jumping aboard… I have to say that these had my interest piqued. I was immediately drawn to Dirty Chai and then Salted Caramel. The colours looked creamy, delicious and… different. They’re the kind of colours that I wish I had in a lipstick, but that I just somehow don’t!

Each tube comes with 4.3 grams of products and retails for $26 CAD/$22 USD. The tube is sleek, compact and sturdy and has a slanted, pointed, doe-foot applicator.

Swatched out the colours are surprisingly pigmented. And heck – you can actually see just how creamy they look!

Bite Beauty French Press Lip Glosses Lip Swatches

Flat White amazed me. I used to wear these kind of muted-down, almost concealer glosses (hello MAC C-Thru!) all the time, but I’d kind of forgotten about it. And now? Now I’m back to being in love with this look!

Vanilla Latte was a shade I really wanted to love because it’s my go-to Starbucks drink order when I’m getting something other than a black coffee. But, true to the hot drink, it actually came out a little more yellow-based than I was looking for. Still pretty though!

Salted Caramel… be still my heart. This is GLORIOUS. I should’be known just from the name that I was going to love this one. It’s an easy lip colour to wear as it goes with so many orange, red and really any warm hues I’ve been wearing lately.

And sure enough, the colour that I was drawn to originally – Dirty Chai – turned out to be frigging glorious. Just look at that colour!

Things started to get a little bit patchy on me with the darker shades (this is French Press), but I think, fundamentally, that they’re not intended to be worn over naked lips unless you’re a deeper skin tone than fair/light. The colour itself is gorgeous, but you can see some distribution problems across my lips and it’s simply because it’s a dark gloss and my lips are incredibly light in comparison. If you’re pale like me and want to wear this, just fill your lips in with a similar lip pencil before applying the gloss and you’ll be good to go.

Black Coffee performed the same as French Press did on me – which is to say that alone on ME it needs a bit of help with a lip pencil, or even just wearing it on top of a lipstick. What I really like about these two darker shades is that they’re not just black-brown – they actually have deep red bases which make them much more appealing (to me).

Final Thoughts

The formula on the Bite Beauty French Press Lip Glosses is impressive – they go on super glossy, and stay that way without any over-the-top tackiness. I was surprised to discover that they were still intact on my lips after two hours of wear. This isn’t normally the case for me – gloss has a tendency to disappear (Is it being wiped off? Am I eating it? I have no idea!) but these stayed put a heck of a lot longer than I was expecting them to.

For me, the paler colours are what I’m drawn to because they require less work but that isn’t to say the darker shades wouldn’t be less work on someone with a much deeper skin tone. When I wear a gloss I want it to be simple and easy, so for me that’s the paler options. Dirty Chai, Salted Caramel and Flat White were my clear favourites – I loved wearing those shades so, so much!

One last thing to mention – the scent. So many people have said it smells like coffee to them, but it doesn’t to me. It has a scent yes, and maybe it’s vaguely of coffee, but to me they smell like freezer burn. And I can pinpoint this scent because I used to keep a jar of instant coffee in the freezer (it was for making mocha icing) and that is EXACTLY the scent I get off of these – freezer burn coffee. (Bizarre, I know.)  The scent/taste is not intrusive however – it does linger, but it tastes fine to me!

So all in all, these are lovely. Comfortable to wear and the longevity is great. Let me know if you’ve snagged any and what you think of that! (And tell me if it smells like coffee to you!)

The Bite Beauty French Press Lip Glosses are limited edition and can be purchased on sephora.ca for $26 CAD or on sephora.com for$22 USD.

The products featured in this post were sent to me for consideration. Post contains affiliate links.