Meet Poppy King--The Lipstick Queen

You gotta love Poppy King. I find her fascinating and inspiring. Here is a glimpse of her success story:

Excerpt from Poppy's website:
As you may know....I am obsessed with the glamour of the lips. From the moment I was seven years old and playing dress ups with my mother’s lipsticks until now, I have been mesmerized by how transformative an amazing lip product can be. So much so that I started my own lipstick brand at 18 and have been designing lipsticks, glosses and other amazing, unique and wonderful lip products ever since.

I am far from alone with my passion and if you are on my site then I know you share it with me. Welcome to my brand! Please enter here to discover lip products like you have never seen before. Every single one of you is in my heart when I design them.
 Stick with me and my lipstick will stick with you.

Love,
Poppy

Why a love for lipstick? "It was the superhero feeling I got when I put it on as a little girl," says King. "The whole ritual just fascinated me. It's a rite of passage—a conduit, to me, of the experience of being female."

After not finding any lipsticks she liked, at 18 she found herself a business partner and founded Poppy lipsticks. She ran that business in her native Australia for 12 years. She was then approached by mega cosmetic conglomerate Estee Lauder and joined them in 2002. She soon was a top New York cosmetics executive but found that the corporate world didn’t suit her "As you go up the ladder, you get further and further away from the end user. That's not what I'm in the business for," she explains. Poppy left in 2005 and penned her first book Lessons of a Lipstick Queen: Finding and Developing the Great Idea That Can Change Your Life. How inspiring is that? In late 2006 she launched Lipstick Queen with Saints and Sinners, a collection of lipstick duos in a single shade with sheer and opaque options. And you gotta love her personal style--she looks like a 40's movie star!

Lipstick Queen products include Sinner lipsticks—matte full color, Saints—sheer and creamy, Big Bang glosses---full color shiny glosses in ‘test tube’ packaging, Chinatown Glossy Pencils—soft, shiny chubby pencils that come with a sharpener (see swatches here), the new Butterfly Ball lipsticks released for holiday and Fifteen Minutes of Fame glosses inspired by Andy Warhol’s quote about everyone in the future being famous for 15 minutes. Poppy says "This is my version of how to bring color back onto the lips without being so full-on." See swatches here

Poppy we love you too!

REVIEW: Lipstick Queen 3-piece Discovery Collection

I have been intrigued with the Lipstick Queen brand for some time, especially since I don't have access to the brand living in the Pacific Northwest aka-- shopping desert. So, when I was home sick watching QVC, (always a dangerous endeavor) I ordered the Three Piece Discovery Collection of Lipstick Queen’s sheer and stylish lipsticks. I think founder Poppy King made these exclusively for me! (ha!). I’m a true lipstick girl—oh don’t get me wrong, I have and use glosses but they aren’t my preference; give me a substantial tube of lipstick and I feel like a sexy classy woman. I get the whole ‘layering’ thing--apply lipliner, then fill in with lipstick and top with gloss for shine. I get it, I just don’t want to take the time or spend the money for three lip products when I can use one Lipstick Queen lipstick and get the same effect. I haven’t been this excited about lipstick for a loooong time. These lipsticks are smooth, moisturizing and the consistency feels more like a balm than a lipstick. They apply like a dream and are fairly long lasting—they last for about 3 hrs on me through my my required 49 (okay 4) cups of tea. I like the fact that they do leave somewhat of a stain on the lips so when they do wear off you have a little color left behind. Poppy King has managed to effectively combine a gloss and a lipstick in one—these have the shine and sheerness of a gloss but the rich color of a lipstick. The consistency is perfection; light and emollient with a nice slip and just the right amount of pigmentation. Don’t be scared by the color in the tube—it applies very sheer and all the shades are wearable by all skintones--yay!

Medieval is a sheer rosebud red and it imparts the look of just bitten lips—perfect for light skinned girls who have been afraid (that's me) of red lips. This red doesn't shout "look at my ruby red lips, aren't I sexy"  but murmurs "my naturally flushed lips are just one thing that makes me a hottie".

Saint Pink is a neutral pink leaning toward cool; this is definitely a MLBB (my lips but better) you’ll wear when you want to look natural but up the ante just enough to win the hand without letting everyone know they’ve been taken. Ha!

Sigh is a shimmering mauve/rose shade from the new Butterfly Ball collection. I would describe this as a neutral mid-rose/mauve with slight shimmer. This shade won’t be released until Spring 2010 so if you buy this set, you'll be the first to have it. It may be my favorite of the set although it’s really tough to choose just one because I love them all!

Left to right: Medieval, Saint Pink, Sigh

Packaging: Lovely chic metal tube with the Lipstick Queen logo

Quality: Excellent—Fairly long lasting (3-4 hrs), very emollient, good pigmentation

Value: The QVC 3 piece set is $39.32 + shipping which averages $14.49 each—a great value for a quality lipstick! Regularly $20 each

Overall: I am so impressed with Lipstick Queen lipsticks, that if I were the Lipstick Queen, I would decree every woman in land must own at least one!