MAC Year of the Snake: Lipsticks

For the upcoming Chinese New Year, MAC has launched a small colour collection aptly called Year of the Snake, inspired by "the luxury-loving individuals born under its sensual sign." This collection is new and limited edition, and is available online only. To create the visual for this launch, MAC collaborated once again with graphic designer and photographer Chenman (who worked with MAC for last year's Chenman Love & Water collection). This collection is comprised of 12 products — six of which are permanent, and six of which are re-promotes. Year of the Snake sees the release of three shades of lipstick. Each lipstick comes in a regular black plastic tubes with special edition secondary cardstock packaging featuring a metallic embossed snake design. The lipstick bullet itself also features a embossed snake design. Each lipstick contains 3 grams of product, and retails for $18.

Freckletone, Cockney, and Plumful
Freckletone, Cockney, and Plumful

Freckletone is a light-medium browned peach in a Lustre finish. This is a permanent shade. The texture is soft and creamy, and it goes on smoothly and evenly. It has medium pigmentation and semi-sheer to semi-opaque buildable colour pay-off. It is lighter and more peach than Jubilee, and darker and more peach than High Tea.

Cockney is a medium vibrant tomato red with very subtle golden micro-shimmer in a Lustre finish. This is a permanent shade (at MAC Stores only). The texture is soft and creamy, and it goes on smoothly and evenly. It has medium pigmentation and semi-sheer to semi-opaque buildable colour pay-off. It is slightly cooler than Lady Bug, and brighter and warmer than Hot Tahiti. 

Plumful is a medium brightened pink-plum in a Lustre finish. This is a permanent shade (at MAC Stores only). The texture is soft and creamy, and it goes on smoothly and evenly. It has medium-high pigmentation and semi-opaque colour pay-off. It is brighter and more plum than Sweetie, and brighter and more pink than Capricious.

Unless you love the embossed snake design and special edition packaging (like I do; let's be honest, it looks pretty damn cool), these are not really must-haves since they are all permanent shades. That having been said, these shades do go really well with the colour story of Year of the Snake (which is predominantly gold, peach, red, and purple). I like that all three shades are beautiful all year round, rather than being trend-based. It makes sense that MAC chose to go with all Lustre finishes for the lipsticks to go with the luminous quality of the other shades in the collection, as well as the shiny embossing of the secondary packaging. If you like these shades and the packaging and you're shopping online, anyway, you might as well get the limited edition version of them since they're the same price as the permanent versions. Otherwise, don't fret, you can still get the regular versions in-store.