I had been very curious about Illamasqua’s products for what seemed like forever, but I’d never really gotten to try the brand out since it’s not available for purchase here in Canada (boo!). You can only imagine my excitement when the plane I was in finally landed in glorious Las Vegas. Yes, I was famished and really needed some food in my system before I passed out, but, really, I was looking forward most to running to Sephora to swatch Illamasqua lipsticks. Kind of scary, no?

So, swatch Illamasqua’s lipsticks I did and, let me tell you, the formula is heavenly. All of the lipstick I tried went on very smooth on the lips and were all SUPER opaque. Seriously, you can get away with only ONE layer of lipstick — it’s that pigmented. I use a lot of matte lipsticks from MAC and I’d have to say that Illamasqua’s matte lipsticks are nowhere near as drying on the lips. Love. LOVE. LOVE!!! The shade I got in the end was Howl (I had a self-imposed limit of one product per category, so one lipstick, one moisturizer/serum, etc.)

I bought Howl which is a rich terracotta/brick red. If you have yellow undertones like moi, you will like Howl since it is a warm red (as opposed to blue-based red like MAC’s Russian Red). The lipstick set me back $20+USD (not inclusive of tax), but it was worth EVERY penny — you will get a lot of wears out of this lipstick since, as I mentioned earlier in this post, it goes on really opaque. There was no feathering (YAY!!) and the pigment is long lasting (DOUBLE YAY!!!).

Now if only Sephora Canada would start making this brand available to us!!