Last year when I moved back to California my mother gave me a slew of products that she didn't want anymore. As I was told, there was nothing wrong with them, she just used her favorites more and found several items collecting dust.
Enter one eager makeup-loving daughter who was especially surprised that one of those products was a Chanel lipliner. Yes, Chanel, that luxury brand that buying one piece of clothing might mean going without food for a year. This gift was one that I was initially very excited to test out and give a full run-down review on, and I have used this product many times since being gifted it. I'm not a brand junkie by any means though, I am someone who will be brutally honest if the $400 product is worse than the $4 product, no matter their name.
***As a disclaimer before I get into the product, I found out about 2 months ago that Chanel cosmetics are NOT cruelty-free. I stopped using this product immediately after finding out and set it aside for this review. If this not being cruelty-free doesn't bother you, then keep reading***
Chanel Precision Lip Definer
The first thing to note is that this doesn't have a weird smell, or any smell at all, which is one positive for this item. To be honest though, I've never encountered a lip pencil with a smell, ever, of course there could always be a first. An immediate downside before even testing this item though is that if you run out and need to replace it, it's $31, and this particular color is no longer being made. This means you'll have to wait for it to show up on Ebay, Amazon and other resale sites, which could mean you'd get if for less, but it could also mean it might cost more than $31. That's pretty darn pricey for a lip liner. Just sayin'. Price aside though, this is the hardest lip pencil I've ever used in my life. Swatching on the back of the hand felt stiff but I was willing to look past that since it had nice, even pigmentation. On the back of the hand that is.
Trying to use this product on the lips was the worst lip experience of my life. To get color payoff I had to press down hard and it was painful, catching my lips and leaving uneven product in the wake of it's application. I tried so many times (before finding out it wasn't cruelty-free) and it each time I was left feeling frustrated with awful-looking lip liner. Even if this was cruelty-free, this wouldn't be worth $3.10, let alone $31. One slight positive is that the other side of this lip liner has a smudge brush to smudge out any lip product you might put on top of it. That's one nice touch, but it doesn't make the price worth it.
(Can you see that uneven patchiness around the edges on the bottom lip? I didn't wear it on my top lip so you could see the difference. Uneven towards the top of my bottom lip too, I can see my natural color showing through. Ugh)
Final Verdict: Nope. The color was pretty, but the pencil was terrible and cleaning that little brush is such a nightmare since the bristles are so densely packed. Getting any gloss or lipstick out of those bristles is a pain. On top of that, my lips hurt every.single.time I used this pencil. On top of that, it's not cruelty-free, which means this bad boy is going in the trash.
Go use Colourpop, go use Wet & Wild, go use Urban Decay, go use Too Faced, use anything other than this one.
