New out by Mary Kay are four lipsticks in colours that I am very, VERY excited to see by the brand – something bold, something unique, and something to spice up their brand name!

Say hello to  their new “It” Lipstick which comes in four vibrant shades in a matte formula. Each shade retails for $20 CAD, and has a lightly sweet, soft vanilla scent. They’re out right now for a limited time only.

What makes me so excited to see these shades from this brand in particular is that Mary Kay has always been a “safe” brand. They stick to the neutral/normal shades, and don’t really go outside of that range very often. So when these shades showed up as a new launch, I was PUMPED! I want to see more excitement like this from a brand that has (for far too long I must say) been known as a grandma brand.

Pigmentation is completely opaque on the orange and the red, and somewhat patchy (but strong) on the two purples. This is fairly consistently a problem with purples in any brand, so I wasn’t that surprised to see it here as well.

Grazie, Violet is the shade that surprised me the most in this launch – it’s so unlike Mary Kay to put out a shade like this, and that just made me smile to see it. It’s a beautiful luminous purple, but it does go a bit patchy on the lips.

Holy smokes! Orange Mio is a loud orange with intense pigmentation. Love this one!

I absolutely thought Red Roma was going to be a boring, old red, but there is definitely something unique about it that I can’t quite put my finger on it. It’s almost verging on neon somehow? Neon red tends to have some pink in it, so I can see a hint of that here. Stunning!

Despite the bullet looking dang near black, Puro Mirtillo is actually a deep purple. The colour is absolutely beautiful, but this one had the biggest problems in terms of patchiness.

Final Thoughts

Each shade applies smoothly and solidly, but I had varying degrees of success with each shade. Overall, I have to say that these lipsticks perform much better without lip primer. I found this surprising as lip primer is a lifesaver for me in terms of keeping my lipstick from bleeding out at the edges and for longevity. I found that lip primer ended up making this lipstick clump up, which is something I had never experienced before. Surprisingly without lip primer these lipsticks did NOT bleed outside of my lip line – I was so impressed!

That being said, I found that the purples and orange gathered a little bit at the edge between where my exterior lip ends and the interior of my mouth begins. The red shade didn’t do this though. As for colour pigmentation, much like that swatches, the orange and red were opaque, and the purples had some patchiness (use a lip pencil underneath your lipstick to prevent that issue from standing out). For me, the red, and then the orange were the clear winners, but I really love the deeper purple shade as it looks really, really good on!

So while there are a few discrepancies between the shades and how they wore on me, I have to say I am so impressed to see Mary Kay releasing these kinds of shades. Kudos to you guys – keep it up!

 The products featured in this post were sent to me for consideration.