Full review + lip swatches: The Happy Skin Lip Mallow

With velvet lipstick being such a popular option these days, it’s not surprising that Happy Skin has finally thrown their own hat in the ring. The new Happy Skin Lip Mallow (P549 at happyskincosmetics.com) is described as a “plush matte lip mousse…weightless, intensely pigmented, and gives you that cloud-like feel on the lips”. It features eight morena-friendly shades that have brown undertones. This also has SPF15.

Allow me to confirm for you that it’s true that this feels plush, cloud-like, and weightless on the lips; the pigmentation is great too, getting to full opacity in a couple of layers! I like that this feels non-drying on the lips for at least the first hour or so. However, if you expect to wear it comfortably beyond that amount of time, I recommend a good layer of lip balm first. I also recommend exfoliating your lips with a sugar scrub if you have any flakes, because this won’t be forgiving.

The finish of these lipsticks are demi-matte. They turn a bit more matte as they dry, but they are not a powder matte as most velvet lipsticks are. I’m cool with that because I don’t particularly look for a flat out matte finish in my lip products anyway and even prefer to get a bit of sheen at least.

Staying power is about average at three hours of wear. The Lip Mallow will fade if you eat or drink, but it will leave a fairly even stain afterwards. In any case, retouching is a breeze! You can go over on top of the first application of the lip color without any gross feeling since it doesn’t bunch up or flake out. Scent-wise, this product has a barely noticeable sweet (vanilla?) note to it.

And now we come to the shades. These eight options look way too similar to each other - they are all slightly different shades of a specific mid-toned red brown. The arm swatch below shows the accurate variation of each shade, so for sure Happy Skin tried for different colors. Chica is quite pink, Spicy leans red, Honeymoon Glow has the signature peachiness to it. But the lip swatches I’ve got on, as you can see, barely register the shade differences. Maybe it’s the type of pigment used that ends up registering the same shade?

PS - sorry if some bits in the swatches look patchy, it’s because I had to use a lip balm to remove the product, and I didn’t go over enough on top of the balm. The lip mallow stains super duper well!

Is this a huge issue? Well, at the end of the day, most of us wouldn’t really buy the entire lipstick line. We’ll choose perhaps two or three that we like the most. So while this may be an unclaimed opportunity to show off exciting shades this time around, there are some pretty ones in here! I like Spicy (reddish brown), Honeymoon Glow (peachy brown), and Naked (muted brown) the most. I recommend to do one semi-opaque layer to really see the color difference. Once you get it at full saturation that’s when I find the colors end up looking the same.

Overall, despite the shade limitations, I do like the Happy Skin Lip Mallow. It reminds me of my one other favorite velvet lip color, the MAC x Pony Park Matte Lip Mousse, which came out last year. They’re both super lightweight on the lips and both have a sort of a hazy, cloud-like finish! If you enjoy this type of formula then I recommend you try out Happy Skin’s new lippie.

Thoughts? Have you tried this already, and how do you like it?