MAC Monday: Formal Black - Strapless Lipstick Swatches & Review

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Hey lovelies,

I'm digging deep into MAC collections past for today's post, featuring Strapless lipstick from the 2006 Formal Black collection. Formal Black was a holiday collection featuring eyeshadow and lipstick palettes, brush sets and lip bags. Strapless came from one of the lip bags, a trio of lip colours (Enchantress lipglass and Ramblin Rose lipstick were the other shades included) in a pretty satin black bag. I stumbled across it in a bulk lot on Trade Me.

The packaging for this set is like the predecessor to last year's glittery Heirloom Mix tubes (see more here), glossy black with sparse pieces of silver glitter. They're almost too sparse, looking more like dust than decor at times, but it's still a nice spin on the traditional packaging.

Strapless is rather deceptive in the tube, appearing as a rose tinted bronze shimmer. Applied, it's actually a sheer, muted plum with heavy gold shimmer. Swatches of this lipstick are very hard to find online so I was quite surprised at how Strapless ended up looking on me, but I like it. The flush of plum gives a lovely stained effect. Colour pay off is mostly even and not very buildable.

Strapless wore for three and a half hours on me and was minimally drying toward the end of wear. After most of the colour had faded, plenty of gold shimmer remained on the lips.