Saturday, March 12, 2011

Benefit Ultra Shine Lipgloss Swatch/Review/FOTD

Benefit recently released their Ultra Shine Lip Gloss this year, and you know that I can't resist a lipgloss, right? So of course when I heard all the raves for this one, I just had to try it out!

Benefit Ultra Shine Lipgloss

The glosses are billed as being the ultimate shiny gloss, and I think they might just be right. These really are pretty shiny! They come in the usual Benefit black-and-white designed box, and come in small but chubby tubes with a brush applicator.

The two glosses I tried were Who Are You Wearing? and the hilariously-named Patootie. Benefit's definitely got a sense of humour!

benefit ultra shine lipgloss 2


Here are swatches of the glosses. As you can see from the swatches, both of them are heavy on shine, but are slightly sheer in terms of pigmentation. Although Who Are You Wearing? looks like it could be quite a bright pink in the tube, it's actually more wearable than it looks, since it lets the natural lip colour show through.

benefit ultra shine lipgloss swatch


L-R: Patootie, Who Are You Wearing?

Patootie is a very pearly, almost bordering on frosty, nude pink. I'd call it oyster pink or shell pink. Very pretty if you like that kind of shade.

Who Are You Wearing? is a midtone purple-pink with sparse, very tiny glitter bits. You can't really see the glitter once it's on.

Here are lip glosses swatched on my lips. First up, here's Patootie:

benefit ultra shine patootie


Like I mentioned earlier, it's more of a nude kind of shade - perfect for pairing with smokey eyes! It's also not as sheer as it looks - if you used a bit more of this one, you would actually blank out some of your natural lip colour.

And here's Who Are You Wearing?, which is my favourite out of the two. I love this colour because it adds a bit of pop to your lip, without being too unwearable. I think this is one of those "go with anything" lip colours, because it's just so versatile!

benefit ultra shine who are you wearing


The Ultra Shines also have a very nice, light, and non-sticky texture, and a smell that is vaguely fruity. In fact, the texture and the smell reminds me a lot of the YSL Gloss Pur range, which I've featured in this post before. The nice, light-but-not-too-fluid texture and the smell are actually pretty similar! The difference is that the YSL Gloss Pur is more strongly scented, and also more pigmented. But when it comes to texture, they're remarkably similar.

Here's a FOTD with my new favourite gloss, Who Are You Wearing? As you can probably tell, I'm really loving this gloss. It goes so well with two of my other staples - taupe eyeshadow and plummy-pinky blush!

benefit who are you wearing lipgloss fotd


These are definitely one of the highlights of Benefit's recent releases (other than Bella Bamba, which I also love). The quality is good, and the shade range is also excellent - there aren't any colours in there that I feel are unwearable, and most of these shades look like they would go with almost anything. If you're on the market for a non-sticky lipgloss with decent staying power and medium pigmentation, these are worth checking out!