Soft Pinch

Rare Beauty Soft Pinch Tinted Lip Oils in Hope + Delight

Had I not been spoiled with access to Asian beauty for most of my life, I too would’ve found these lip oils as revolutionary as the rest of the “Western” beauty world. Korean brands in particular have been perfecting this transformational makeup tech for quite some time, to be clear—Romand and 3CE make some of my favorites—but Rare Beauty did an exceptional job introducing these watery, gel-to-oil lip stains to the States.

The packaging is sweet, the edit of shades rather romantic and true to Selena Gomez’s personal aesthetic. If you’re ordering off of swatches, the lighter lip oils settle into darker versions of themselves (making them more wearable for anyone with pigmented lips or those with tan to deep complexions) and the richer ones end up being less deep than their packaging suggests. Of the Soft Pinch Tinted Lip Oils, Hope and Delight were the shades that I didn’t have in my collection yet. Hope has a hint of a peachy coral that adds brightness to my natural lip color; Delight is a reddened rosewood that brings the moodiness I sometimes yearn for against my dark hair. Both came with me to my sabbatical in Taiwan: I knew I’d be in a face mask 90% of the time—this is a nation that values community and cleanliness—and the combination of light hydration and a pretty stain was just what I needed.

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xx