Review: Femme Couture Prime Wear Long Wearing Lip Créme in Honey Nude

When reflecting upon my experiences with this new lipstick from Femme Couture, this quote by Dorothy Parker immediately came to mind:

"This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force."

Substitute "novel" with "lipstick" and you've pretty much summed up my feelings about this product. I've  tried--oh I've tried--to make this lipstick work for me since I purchased it at Sally Beauty a little while ago, but I'm afraid there's just no saving it.

Femme Couture Prime Wear Long Wearing Lip Créme in Honey Nude (matte)

(retail: $7.99 at Sally Beauty; currently on sale for $5.99. 0.13 oz)

Keep reading for my full review...

The Prime Wear range comes in 18 shades and an additional lip primer. Looking at the counter display at Sally, I didn't see anything to indicate that you actually need to wear the primer before you use these lip colors, but that very well may be the case.

There are seven matte shades in this range, as well as eleven glossy shades. Click here to view the full range. 

When I purchased Honey Nude, I was hoping it would be similar to Revlon's matte lipstick in Mauve It Over, which looks a lot like this on me. That's about as nude as I can go with matte lipsticks before I start looking sickly, and judging from the way Honey Nude looked in the packaging in the store, I hoped it would be a good match (the shimmer that you see in the above photos wasn't really visible in the store).

But as you'll see, I didn't anticipate that this was going to be a nude, FROSTY matte:

I didn't give up hope though because, when swatched on my hand, it didn't look nearly as frosty as in the tube:

But then, I put it on....

immediately after application

Ten minutes after application

Can I just end this review right here? Do I really need to explain? 

OK, let me give you a few more details (as if the pic above doesn't speak for itself). This lipstick glides on quite smoothly (almost the same feeling as the Rimmel Kate Moss matte lipsticks), but unlike the Rimmel Kate Moss matte lipstick, this lipstick is the least true-to-tube of probably any lipstick I've purchased in the last five years. Unlike the pretty nude shade you see in the tube, this turned an odd shade of nudish-gold on my lips, and the longer I wore it, the more it turned almost white on my medium-pigmented lips.

The texture of this lipstick feels quite nice upon initial application, but then everything suddenly goes south. To be fair, this COULD be an issue specific to the shade Honey Nude. I image that nude mattes are hard to formulate as it is, but then to throw a lot of frost into the mix? Well it seems like you're just begging for a cakey end-product. And cakey is what you shall receive!

The scent of this lipstick is a little bit odd. It's not heavily scented, but it has a "chemical" note to it, with just a little bit of a bakery note (cupcakes, maybe). The flavor really surprised me--I thought it was going to taste like a standard lipstick but it's actually VERY sweet. Very sugary-sweet, but not like a cupcake; more like just plain sugar.

Staying power? Well, that would be a big, fat zero. Seriously, the first time I put this on, I was shocked to see that 20 minutes after application, even the cakey bits were gone. It was as if I had never even worn this lipstick. (Granted, I do play with my lips a lot, but usually matte lipsticks stay on my lips for a good hour or two, at least!)

FINAL VERDICT: I think the picture above speaks for itself. This was definitely not a love-match for me and I'm really struggling to find something positive to say about this product. Actually, no, I take that back. The texture upon initial application is very nice--it's smooth and not heavy at all. No tugging whatsoever. But beyond that, I just don't know what else to say. I hope beyond all hope that the issues with this product were specific to the shade I purchased. I'm not sure if I'm ready to try another shade just yet, but if I can find one on clearance, I might revisit this line. Also, if you must use one of the primers in this line BEFORE you apply one of the lipsticks, then that would clearly explain my experience with this product, since I did not purchase the separate primer.

If you own any other shades in this range, I would absolutely LOVE to hear from you. Please tell me these issues are only specific to Honey Nude. (Please!)