I was given this lipstick by my husband a while back and was stunned that he had paid £13.50 each (from Selfridges) for two 3.5g lipsticks, especially as I'd never used it before and he had randomly picked colours that he thought I'd like. Lipstick is one of those things that you have to know what colour the wearer is going to like and when you're paying over £10 you need to make sure you're getting it right. Anyway, one of the shades he'd purchased for me was coded 797 - Violet Spectral (I'm not reviewing the other shade...), which looked nice enough so I decided to give it a try on a night out.


~*~APPLYING IT/DURABILITY~*~

Applying the lipstick was easy enough. It was smooth and very creamy and had a faint smell (which reminded me of days long gone by when I was a kid and used to "borrow" mum's lipsticks to play with) - I don't know why one would sniff at lipstick, but me being me, that's what I do and it's really been a long time since I've noticed any particular smell (or scent) from a lipstick. It looked nice enough on my lips and I pulled faces at myself in the mirror to give the lipstick a good stretch on my lips and blotted it ever so slightly - as I tend to do with new lipsticks until I'm sure they won't leave nasty marks over everything my lips come into contact with. The colour looked nice enough but it certainly didn't live up to the advertising claims of being "luminous and brilliant".

Ok I'm about to leave the house and feel very thirsty so I dash to the kitchen and grab myself a glass of water and what's this? Lippie marks over the rim of the glass? And really noticeable. I groan and knowing I haven't got time to go dig out another lipstick as a cab's waiting outside, I leave the house with a bit of doubt creeping into my head.

To cut a long story short, during the whole evening whilst I was out, the lipstick just came off on everything my lips touched - my cigarettes, my drink glasses, kissing my pals on the cheeks (as I do when I greet them as opposed to air-kissing), oh dear I was like one of those ole aunts we all had as a kid putting her big lipstick marks all over people's faces! I was too scared to reapply too often as I just felt sick that it was coming off so easily - was I supposed to wear it with a lipcote that I wasn't aware of?


~*~ADVERTISING BLURB~*~

The advertising says _"Vibrations of color-an easy-to-wear lipstick offering shades that are luminous and brilliant. Delicately scented with tea rose, lips are softer, perfectly moisturized, and irresistible." And also claims "Multireflex technology rediffuses light, giving the mouth that satisfied glow!"_


~*~THE LOOK~*~

It's a pretty enough lipstick; the casing is so elegant that you'd think you were opening a tiny perfume bottle from the way the little gold coloured miniature doorknob sits on top of this lippie. The plastic lipstick cover is a blue/grey shade and quite see-through with Dior embedded nicely across it. On opening the lipstick you have a gold (fake obviously) casing with Dior again printed on it all the way around. The lipstick is easy to operate (sorry to be so technical LOL) - you just twist the bottom gold part clockwise and out pops your lipstick ready to use.


~*~RANGE OF COLOURS~*~

There seems to be a huge range of colours available in this particular range including the following (I'm not listing them all by any means, just giving you an example of what's available):

* White Exposure - which is believe it or not, white...
* Rose Ellipse - a very light pink shade
* Beigematic - not beige as you might imagine but a brownish shade
* Rose Tempo - light pink but not as light as the Rose Ellipse shade
* Sparkling Rose - a darker pink
* Lunar Brown - a reddish brown
* Mystic Mauve - still pink, this time a medium shade of pink
* Polychrome Brown - this just looks orange to me, but not as bright as an actual orange (the fruit as opposed to, erm, what else is orange?!)...
* Divinely Pink - this is a fairly dark pink
* Overexposed Violet - a medium violet shade
* Spicy Red - not as spicy as they'd have you believe by the name, but a dullish red, almost brown/pink
* Red Interference - this is a vibrant red!
* Sparkling Brown - this is a REALLY dark colour, almost dark blue/black!

This is not an exhaustive list, probably not even 50% of the colours available... But hopefully it'll give you an idea of the colours if you should choose to try this lipstick out.


~*~CONCLUSION~*~

Well guess where that lipstick is now? Actually both of them because my husband bought me two remember (come on keep up with me...)?! At the bottom of my makeup drawer is where! After trying it out a handful of times I couldn't be bothered with having to reapply so often and the mess it was leaving everywhere... What a sheer waste of money - aside from the smooth creamy almost silky feel you have when applying this lipstick I can't think of a reason to use this lipstick (and really that's not even a good reason). Even tried using them with lip-coat and it still didn't want to stay on. I've never had this problem with other lipsticks so all I can say is it's a very expensive piece of lipstick which is expected to be worn by people who do not eat, drink, smoke, talk or anything else OR I must have really odd lips which basically just want to reject this particular lipstick!!! (No funny comments about my "odd" lips now please LOL). And the moisturizing element of the lipstick? I'm not being funny but it doesn't actually stay on one's lips long enough to find out if it even works...

Sorry, but it's not what I expect from Christian Dior. I think I'll stick to my tried and tested faithful lipstick brands such as Revlon, Rimmel and L'Oreal.

If, even after reading my review, you still wish to purchase Dior Addict Colorplay Lipstick, you can buy it from larger department stores where they stock it (it's not the sort of thing I've seen in Boots or Superdrug). The current RRP is about £16 (May 2009).


Thanks for reading.