Читать книгу Pretty Iconic: A Personal Look at the Beauty Products that Changed the World - Sali Hughes - Страница 13

In 1989 Clinique launched a new type of lip colour. Almost Lipstick was ‘not quite a lipstick, not quite a gloss, but the best of both’, and I was instantly intrigued. There were six shades in the range (Ruby Melt – the first sheer red I’d seen – was given to me by my brother David, much to my giddy joy), but the jewel in the crown was Black Honey, a blackberry stain without the jammy stickiness. Black Honey was so sheer, forgiving and thin of bullet (Almost Lipsticks came in a slender, stylo-type applicator) that it could be applied in mirrorless nightclub loos or standing on a bumpy night bus, or even while driving a car, as demonstrated by Julia Roberts, who slicks on Black Honey while behind the wheel in nineties film Stepmom. It made the wearer seem dressed up without looking try-hard. I was, and am, a huge fan myself and wore it throughout the nineties, but it looks good on literally everyone. As long as you had Black Honey in your kit, you could make any woman, regardless of age, race, hair or skin tone, look pretty great.

The rest of the shade line-up failed to make as much of an impact and so, some years later, Clinique axed Almost Lipsticks, leaving only bestseller Black Honey as a stand-alone product. I can think of few other examples of a single shade becoming so popular that it outlives its entire product line, but in this case it’s wholly deserved. Clinique rolled again and relaunched Almost Lipsticks in the early 2000s, this time capitalising on its hero-shade’s popularity by namechecking it throughout the rest of the range (Flirty Honey, Lovely Honey, Bare Honey and so on), but by now lip stains and tinted balms were ten a penny and the second-generation shades failed to take off. Almost Lipsticks were withdrawn yet again, with one inevitable exception. We’re still sweet on Black Honey.