N.Y.C. 16 Hour Smooch Proof Lip Stain Review + Photos

Today I've got another hyped product for you! Lip stains in general have been getting a lot of press lately as there is a trend for long wearing lip color. Max Factor, Cover Girl, Maybelline and other brands have all tried their hand at a stain and from the reviews I've read, they've sorta failed.

I saw these at Musings of a Muse (love her, haha) and wanted to give them a shot since I've never tried a stain. I also loved the color range.












I found these at Rite Aid for $4.99 each, but I've heard that Walmart sells them for under $3. I've also seen them at K-Mart for $4.99 as well, I believe. You get 0.10oz (3mL) in the package. For reference, the Maybelline lipstain has 0.85oz, so these are a bit on the small side! (However, it is worthy of noting that I think the Mac Pro Longwear lipstains have less product than the NYC ones)

I picked up #492 Never Ending Nude and #499 Forever Mine Wine. The packaging is simple -- it looks like a marker and the ingredients are on a sticker on the cap instead of being printed on the plastic wrapper (thanks, NYC!).










































Forever Mine Wine is a beautiful plum/berry shade that turns more purple on your lips than in a hand swatch. Never Ending Nude is a light pinky nude with a little brown, but nothing corpse like or unnatural looking.

It is worthy of noting that these do contain parabens, so if you've got a thing against that, definitely pass on these.

In terms of my review, nothing complicated here. These lip stains are really good for the price. I personally find the marker tip a bit weird to get an even line, but that is just my inexperience with using them. I had no feathering throughout the day, which is a big plus with a liquid product that absorbs into the lips.

However, I did experience some drying as the day went on. I will say that it lasted throughout the entire day... more specifically: two meals, plenty of lip balm applications and a ton of mouth wiping. Towards lunchtime, I was starting to feel like my lips were really dry! I have naturally dry lips and I used lip balm very sparingly that morning as you are supposed to apply this product to bare lips. Someone with better lips than mine may not have trouble with dryness. It wasn't extreme to a point of wanting to take it off, but I kept finding myself applying lip balm over top, which wasn't helping.

I took photos throughout the day to help show you:





























This is a fresh application to bare lips around 7:30AM. As you can see, the color pooled a little on my lower lip where I had a bit of a damaged area. It's not dead skin or anything, just an area that I probably chewed at some point.


















This is at lunch time about 4 1/2 hours later. I applied balm, took a drink out of a soda can, and then pressed my lips to this napkin. No real transfer except a very small amount.




























This is after eating, and I wasn't eating dainty like at all. I purposefully wiped my mouth a lot and ate sloppily to try and test the lip stain properly. You can see from both pictures that my lips are starting to look a bit gnarly at this point... the spots from the fresh application picture are more noticeable and actually look like they're bleeding. Ew. Honestly, from far away you couldn't tell, and it still looked fine.














This is at the end of the day, around 6PM (in sunlight). Some of those nasty spots had faded but overall, the lip color wasn't looking terrible or anything. I had a darker line around the outside of my mouth that I fixed with a napkin. After this photo, I ate another meal and then went to look at furniture... the color was still definitely there and my husband even noticed.

So to round out this review... I think these are worth a shot. I've worn the nude one, but not for a long period so I can't say for sure that it has the lasting power of the darker berry shade. Generally with these products, the darkest shades hang around the longest. I didn't notice a difference in the texture of the shades or anything. I'll post a FOTD with the nude one if you're interested -- I don't wear nudes very often and really got it to compare it to the berry shade!

If you've got REALLY badly dried lips, you may want to steer clear of these. But with summer coming, I can see myself wearing both shades and possibly others that I pick up ;-)