Dior Fluid Stick: 575 Wonderland, 754 Pandore, 872 Mona Lisette

Hello my dears! It's been hectic round ere, so apologies for the absence of new posts and blinding you with Cleo all week.

moar blindings. different blindings.

I've spent the last fortnight enjoying a torrid affair with my three Dior Fluid Sticks (pause for snorting & horking from the peanut gallery) and am ready to declare this my NEW FAVOURITE LIP FORMULA.

Such excellence actually doesn't call for a long nitpicky review, so I'll try to keep the rave brief and to the (bullet) point.

• Formula: A genu-wiiiine liquid lipstick with a true-to-copy lightweight feel. A few heavy lacquered coats feels like a light balm, while a thinner coat is as almost-weightless as a satin lipstick. Manages to hug the lips closely (no messy smearing/migration/goopiness) without any stickiness. Even a thick glossy coat doesn't goop up where my lips meet.
• Finish: Can be built up to an incredibly glassy shine, but also blotted down to a satinny (not flat matte) stain. Either way, very flattering/plumping on my very dry, vertical-lined lips.
• Pigmentation: Very pigmented! But also versatile -- the formula is sufficiently 'self-contained' [if you attempt to make a long, dragged-out swatch you'll see the formula wants to 'hold together'] to allow for multiple coats to be layered up without streakiness / mess, or to be sheered out into a barely-there veil of pigment while remaining perfectly even without patchiness.
• Lasting power / wear: As it hugs the lips so closely, wear-time is on par with that of a good, pigmented satin lipstick. Lasts through multiple drinks and snacks, losing a little glossiness on the way; fades to an even stain after a meal. Even in its stain form it retains a little satin/balminess and never does that dead matte sinking-into-liplines thing.
• Scent/taste: Dior's usual synthetic -- slightly rubbery -- vanilla. More revolting to me than YSL's boozy rose Glossy Stains*, but admittedly much fainter, and fades within half an hour even to my acutely vanilla-loathing nose. Faintly sweet taste.
• Applicator: Chubby spade-shaped sponge, fairly dense with only a little fuzz at the edges. Small/precise enough to be usable even with the bright/dark shades in the line, though I prefer to work with a lipbrush to establish shape, reserving the sponge for a final top coat if wanted. 
• Colour-range: sixteen shades ranging from nudes through brights and vamps. The shades differ between markets -- Asia didn't get any of the darker 800-900 shades, for example, but had two midtone offerings (coral 552 Jolie Rêve and mauve 669 Rose Tricheuse) I haven't seen on US/European product listings.

*Regular readers know how I adore the Glossy Stains. I like these even more. Because what the Fluid Sticks sacrifice in lasting power, they make up for in versatility/controllability of pigment and comfort -- I can wear them even with lips freshly torn up and then healing from my Visée Creamy Lipstick adventure, and they didn't irritate or catch on flakes/chapped areas. Fluid Sticks also apply smoothly over all kinds of lipbalms, whereas I find bare lips work best for Glossy Stains.


Time for some pictures! My shades: 575 Wonderland, 754 Pandore and 872 Mona Lisette (the last available in Europe/Asia but not the US).

All are the bright, clear, hyphenated reds which I wear most frequently: Mona Lisette a rose-, Pandore a coral- and Wonderland a pink-red.



Worn as I most frequently would -- one coat (i.e. the exact amount dispensed on the applicator without redipping) applied with a lipbrush:

To display the versatility of these shades, here they are again with (left) two coats layered straight from the applicator and (right) blotted down into a satin stain -- this is also what they look like after a meal.