LIPS

 

This Ombré Lipstick Tutorial Is Going Viral

We spoke with the makeup artist behind the look.
Jacinda Pender Makeup Artist

Just like with ombré hair and nails, ombré lips offer subtle definition and dimension. The technique involves subtly blending different shades of the same color family for a look so beautiful that it's become beloved among beauty aficionados everywhere. So it should be a surprise to no one that makeup artist Jacinda Pender's nude ombré lip tutorial has gotten over 1.2 million views on Twitter.

  This is [for] whenever I'm in the mood for a dark glossy lip look, which is rare," Pender tells Allure. "If I had the time, patience, and energy to rock this badass glossy ombré look, I definitely would. It's such a sexy look that radiates such strong dark, mysterious, and vampire energy."
      If you want to replicate this look she calls "Dark 'N Lovely," it takes a special cocktail of lip products and lots of layering. She first uses a dark chocolate color (she used the eyeliner Glossier Play Colorslide in Brack, but we say stick to a lip pencil in a similar color like the Pat McGrath Permagel Ultra Lip Pencil in Deep Void), to draw on a thick border to line her lips.

Then she fills the inside with a reddish tan, like Wet n Wild's MegaBlast Lip Color in Cinnamon Spice, and blends the light, pale-pink metallic Tattoo Junkee Cosmetics Famous Metallic Lip Color over it to get that ombré effect. She finishes with a $1 clear lip gloss for some added shine. In this unique spin on a conventional nude lip, you get a blurred ombré that works especially great on deep skin tones.

                   This isn't the first video to go viral for the makeup artist, as many of her lips videos have gotten hundreds of thousands of views. But even those don't seem to really compare. "I had a keen idea how this video was going to do, but I honestly didn't expect it to blow up this fast," she says.

Maybe it's the ASMR aspect of the looped video that has some people watching it over and over again, but her best guess as to why this video in particular gained over a million views is because people are nostalgic for the '90s.

"You saw a lot of ombré lip looks in the '90s, [especially] among women like Aaliyah, Lauryn Hill, and Nia Long," she says. "Black women are the definite blueprint for the sudden, sought-after look." And we couldn't agree more. Now don't mind us as we hit replay.