Startifacts Your Personal Grooming: A Bangin’ Good Time With the Bright Lipsticks in MAC Bangin’ Brilliant

The new MAC Bangin’ Brilliant Lipstick in Dreampot ($17)

I can’t remember — is wearing blue lipstick and blue eyeliner at the same time a do or a don’t?

Ah, the age-old question… LOL!

I don’t think there are any hard and fast, absolutely unbreakable makeup rules, so I’m gonna say “yes.” Blue eyeliner with blue lipstick is a total do.

I contemplated this conundrum the other day when I was wearing some teal winged liner (just for the heck of it) and decided to also try on a few of the lipsticks in the new MAC Bangin’ Brilliant collection.

You know that cray-cray lip colors are having a moment when you can visit a small mall and bump into a girl wearing a baby pink polo shirt and green lipstick (true story!), and the MAC Bangin’ Brilliants fit right in with that out-of-the box color movement happening right now.

The 29 new lipstick shades ($17 each) were recently added to the MAC permanent line, along with the Bangin’ Brilliant shadows and blushes.

mac bangin brilliant lipsticks-1

mac bangin brilliant lipsticks-2

With these colors, “basic” is about a million light years away. Of course there are bright pinks, oranges and reds, but there also blues, purples, a neon green, a midnight black, a stark white… Seriously, there’s some crazy sh*t up in the mix.

I don’t feel completely comfortable in some of them, to be honest, but if you have that runway stomp-walk kind of swag, they could look super cool.

I dunno… One of these days, I might get the urge to wear a light purple to Costco to buy kitty litter and a jumbo pack of hot dogs.

You never know. Life is short. Might as well.

Matte fuchsia pink Breathing Fire and matte bright red Mangrove are my favorites of the shades I’ve tried so far.

Breathing Fire

Mangrove

They’re pigmented, smooth, bright and fun, and they look meowza with winged liner. (And not just teal winged liner, LOL!! An O.G. black cat eye works, too).

Dreampot, the matte baby blue in the top pic, looks cool as hell in pics…but I feel like it makes me look like I’m trying too hard to secure my status as “The Cool Mom” when I wear it in real life.

It’s also high maintenance, and I have to apply at least three layers to build the color to where it won’t break up on my lips. And if I don’t get the edges juuuuust right, it looks sloppy.

If you’re thinking about going for the edgier colors, I’d recommend the lighter purples. They’re totes on point.

Satiny purplish blue Dew, matte mauve Lavender Jade and matte light purple 4Eva lay down opaque, consistent color with a few swipes.

Dew

Lavender Jade

They have a “How you like me now?” vibe but still reside in the realm of relatively wearable. I’d wear one to an event with an artsy crowd, like a party at a gallery, or to Comicon, where I’d stalk the actors from Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead, haha!

mac bangin brilliant lipsticks swatches