Merit Beauty just launched its first lipstick

“Finally, a minimalist makeup brand for mortals,” was my first reaction upon encountering Merit Beauty a year ago. Designed to be used with a single hand (informed by founder Katherine Power’s predilection for an in-car makeup application), the products offered a fresh, your-face-but-better esthetic while still addressing the concerns of skin over 25.

It was a revelation. Positioning wise, it felt like a grown-up Glossier or the Mejuri of makeup, if you will: chic in a cool, understated way yet still affordable. The lineup featured just seven products — a complexion stick, blending brush, cream blush, highlighting balm, tinted lip oil, brow gel and mascara — and now, a month after celebrating its first birthday, Merit is (finally!) welcoming a brand new addition to the range: its first ever lipstick.

The highly anticipated Signature Lip is described as a “new approach to lipstick.” “It feels almost like a serum, it’s so sheer, but it’s also buildable,” explains Aila Morin, Merit’s senior vice-president of growth, brand and innovation. (Fun fact: Morin, a Canadian expat living in L.A., was formerly director of brand marketing and go-to-market for Mejuri.)

You’ve perhaps noticed that in the last two years, the lip category has largely been ruled by lipstick-balm hybrids. And while satisfyingly creamy and easy to wear, most present a major flaw, said Morin: “If you have any fine lines, they migrate.” That’s where Merit comes in, ensuring elder millennials and Gen X-ers can also participate in the latest makeup trends. “Gen Zs do love Merit — they’re just not the target customer,” said Morin.

I can vouch that Signature Lip stays put where you’ve applied it, never daring to slip past your lip line. It also fades evenly, so you don’t get that “just finished lunch” bare-lips-with-a ring-of-lipstick look.

Most importantly, the impressive wear doesn’t compromise comfort. “When I last worked in an office in 2019, the same time I last wore blazers and high-waisted pants, I would always put on a satin lipstick at 8:30 a.m. and, by 11 a.m., I’d have the Laneige Lip Sleeping Mask out on my desk because my lips would be completely dried out,” said Morin. (At this point in the recording of the interview, I can be heard exclaiming an overeager “Oh my God, same!”)

To that effect, the formula is laced with squalane and sunflower seed oil to soak lips with moisture, without feeling thick or occlusive. Instead, it kind of feels like you’ve got nothing on, but it doesn’t look like you’ve got nothing on. Each shade can be worn as a sheer veil of colour (as seen at Proenza Schouler’s Fall/Winter 2022 show, where Signature Lip made its debut on the likes of Bella Hadid), but it can also be layered to reveal its full, stunning saturation.

Merit Beauty Signature Lip Lightweight Lipstick, $34 each, meritbeauty.com SHOP HERE

Signature Lip currently comes in eight shades. “We always want to be inclusive, but not have so many colours that it’s overwhelming to select,” said Morin. Each colour is thus strategically blended to suit a wide range of skin tones. “Most beauty brands will put a bit of white pigment to give more opacity to products, but it also means that they don’t read well on darker skin tones,” she explained. “We don’t do that in any of our products, so your own lip colour will always show through a little bit, so that it’s true to you.”

In the nude category, you’ve got three options: 1990 for deeper skin tones, Slip for medium complexions and Baby for fairer skin tones (my personal favourite, a neutral beige-y brown with the faintest kiss of rose — it’s perfection). There are also three pinks: Millennial is the lightest, Fashion is a soft berry and L’Avenue is a bolder berry brown. Rounding out the offering are two reds, which proved the hardest to develop.

“Tiger took 43 rounds to get right because red is so hard,” said Morin. She and the team had initially wanted to create a blue red, but “the reality is there are so many great ones on the market — (M. A. C’s) Ruby Woo, Russian Red — so there’s really no point in doing something that’s already perfect.”

So they decided to go in the opposite direction, devising a true brick red inspired by the kind of colour you’d see on Naomi Campbell or Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy in the ’90s. “We did the undertones of that but made it super flattering, because in the ’90s everything was either really ashy or really orange. There isn’t really anything like it on the market right now.” It’s rich and warm and just the thing to pair with a black turtleneck and camel coat à la Bessette-Kennedy.

Last but not least is Cabo, a soft orange red that begs to be slipped in a carry-on brimming with bikinis. It reminds me a bit of the fantastic Cara Cara, a fiery shade of the brand’s aforementioned tinted lip oil.

In true Merit fashion, every last detail has been pondered over, including the packaging. It consists of an acrylic cap made of 30 per cent post-consumer-recycled plastic. It’s also curbside recyclable as it doesn’t contain mixed materials. “That’s why it doesn’t connect (to the other part of the lipstick). Any lipstick bullet isn’t recyclable because it has to be aluminum with plastic inside.” Keeping the components separate makes for easy sorting and recycling.

“We take our time because we’re perfectionists,” Morin said, explaining why it took so long for the brand to introduce a new product post-launch. Though you’ll be pleased to know she did tease that more newness would be coming this year, including a possible foray into a different category (skin care, anyone?). Until then, you can get your hands on Signature Lip now at meritbeauty.com.

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Katherine Lalancette is the beauty director of The Kit, based in Toronto. She writes about beauty and trends. Reach her on email at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter: @kik_tweets