The Lipstick Trick Every French Woman Knows

“I think people know me as the girl with the lipstick,” says Violette Serrat, laughing. The French makeup artist, who actually went to school for art and is self-taught in the world of beauty, is a superstar: in addition to founding her own successful beauty brand, Violette_FR, she is creative director of make-up at Guerlain. She recently oversaw the creation of 40 new lipstick shades for the house, for its Rouge G lipstick. “I only had two days to decide on the shades,” she says. “Of course, production took much longer—the most time-consuming part was the formulation afterwards. The flesh tone shades were particularly tricky. My aim is always to challenge the product developers to do things differently than they would otherwise. I basically reset the factory settings and start from scratch with the team.”

In the case of the nude shades, going back to factory settings meant that no white base pigment was used. “Most lipsticks in skin-colored shades have a white base,” says Serrat. “This means that they are only wearable, if at all, for very fair-skinned people. To be honest, everyone looks kind of dead with it. And it doesn’t work for an olive complexion like mine or for Black skin, anyway. So I’ve removed the white pigment from the formula. It took us ages to formulate the lipsticks in a way that we were happy with.”

Serrat attributes her unorthodox approach to product development to her background in art, among other things. “You know, I never went to makeup school. So I have no certificate, no proof that I know how to apply make-up properly. The only training I had was in painting.” She actually traces one of her favourite makeup tricks back to her passion for Neoclassicism and Renaissance art.

“To make lipstick—and blush, for that matter—look natural, it’s basically about layering several sheer shades on top of each other,” says Serrat. “Natural cheek and lip blush never consists of just one color. Painters did the same thing. During my time at art school, I was obsessed with how painters managed to imitate the natural blush of lips and cheeks.” So how does it work? “Basically, it’s just a matter of layering several transparent shades on top of each other. The natural red of the lips or cheeks never consists of just one monotone shade. When you do it this way, it looks as if the blush is really shimmering through the skin, just like the blood vessels do naturally.”

Today, Violette is wearing a bright red on her lips (“Rouge G, of course”), and naturally, she has layered two shades, one on top of the other. Despite the bold colour, she still looks incredibly natural as well as elegant. “In France, we like bold lipstick colours, but it has to look like it took two seconds. And to be honest, we usually only need two seconds. They always say that to look effortless, you have to be effortless—it’s no secret.”

Serrat is not a fan of lip liners. It’s why she shaped the Rouge G lipstick so that it is tapered on one side, “so that you can apply it as precisely as if you had used both [a lip pencil and a lipstick]—even without a liner and lip brush.” Finally, she recommends tapping the lipstick in lightly after application, using your finger. This may not be doable in two seconds for the inexperienced, but it certainly won’t take longer than two minutes, and it looks incredibly chic.