When You're Faithful to Your Lipstick and Your Lipstick Doesn't Return the Favor...

Monogamy: the condition or practice of having a single mate during a period of time

This implies an agreement between two parties, yes? So, what happens when one party is monogamous and the other party is not? Well, many of us are unfortunately familiar with this, right?

But what if your monogamous relationship is with your lipstick? That is to say, you have used none other than this one lipstick for years. Then one day, just like in any other relationship, you notice little things…like it’s not so easy to find anymore. It’s not on the front display shelf anymore. Maybe you have to ask for it specially, or “it’s in the back.” Maybe it’s just constantly out of stock. So you do the thing you know you’re never supposed to do for fear of getting the answer you don’t want to get: you ask what's going on. And what you find out is that it’s being discontinued. Like any betrayal, you never know the real reason it’s being discontinued, and if you ask, you probably will not be told the truth; all you know is that someday soon you will not be able to get it anymore, and you go into a panic.

This is happening to my friend Maggie, except that it’s not just any lipstick. It’s the only lipstick she wears, and, more than that, it’s the only makeup she wears. Period. When I found out about this, quite by accident one night by complimenting her on how great her lipstick looked (because I pay attention to these things), she told me of her challenge and her mission to find every last tube of MAC Lip Gelee in Moistly (terrible name) left in the New York City area or online. I understand her devotion. An already gorgeous girl with perfect skin, this not-quite-a-gloss, not-quite-a-lipstick with just a subtle punch of berry stain totally lights up her face.

I told her of my own journey, having survived a betrayal many years ago when Aveda pulled its Redwood Cerise lipstick for no apparent reason and I made my husband drive me around Manhattan to every Aveda store one Saturday, Visa card in hand, buying them all. I still have two tubes left. Of course it’s worth noting that my backlash to that betrayal was nothing like Maggie's: I did not pledge undying allegiance to my color. Instead, I turned into a lipstick whore, abandoning my color and wearing anything that came along, to the point where I now carry around at least 10 lipsticks in different shades to suit my mood and clothing. I even had to buy a bigger makeup bag to suit my loose lips.

But I digress...this is not Maggie’s style, so I pledged to help her find what was left in New York of what is rightfully hers. Her three solid months of work has yielded a total of 13 tubes, procured from online scores, back rooms at MAC counters at Macy’s, and as far afield as a Neiman Marcus or two. Now her friends know of her plight and when they find a tube, she gets them as gifts.

With this cushion of time, I have advised her to refrigerate all of them and when she gets down to her last tube and a half, she is to keep the full tube for herself to use, and bring the half to one of the great miracles of modern makeup, Three Custom Color, handily located in Manhattan on 22nd Street. In addition to their own roster of their own extraordinary products – blushes that make you look like you just came in off the ski slopes and lipsticks named after New York dance clubs from the ‘80s – they will literally replicate for you your long-lost anything…not just lipstick but blush, foundation, powder, brow gel, you name it. Even my very own Redwood Cerise is already in their database.

Are they a miracle? Kind of...or maybe they're just the nice, solid relationship you've been looking for all this time.