This holiday season, Anastasia is releasing exclusive lipsticks for Macy's, Ulta, and Sephora respectively. The shades, named Rock Sand, Starfish, and Trouble, made their debut on the brand's Instagram story, where they were swatched on models of three different skin tones.
But something went… very wrong.
At first glance, it appears this small collection of lipsticks is simply ill-fitted for people with dark complexions.
Which is a disgrace in itself, but it appears there's something more happening in these swatch videos.
In each video, it appears the Black model is wearing an ENTIRELY different lipstick than the others.
And Twitter is trying to figure out why the heck that is.
Some merely accredit it to a chemical reaction in the lipstick caused by the pH of the model's skin.
But even the applicators are wildly different shades.
According to some, it could just be a difference in lighting — which makes sense, because different skin tones require different lighting.
But folks are just not buying it.
It appears ABH did something awfully similar with another recently released trio of lipsticks.
And the photographic evidence is there — these wands look completely different.
Making a lipstick shade look bad on a woman of color intentionally(?) isn't going to boost sales by any means.
And they could have, at the very least, given the poor woman some lip liner as a common courtesy.
But there is an explanation. Anastasia Beverly Hills apologized for the situation, which it says was just an unfortunate editing accident.
The brand gave us this statement from its customer service team:
"Our mistake! Our social media manager unfortunately posted the wrong clips for model Dora for our new Liquid Lipsticks, and we did not internally catch the mistakes until user comments drew our attention to the uploading errors last night. This footage is shot on an iPhone and then collaged with additional footage for Instagram Stories – our social manager mistakenly confused which clip went with which post. We want to thank everyone who helped call out this mistake, and we apologize for the confusion. We work with Dora often and consider her a part of our glam family. It’s always our intent to represent her – and all other ABH models – accurately, as our customers look to swatches to determine if a shade of lipstick or eye shadow suits their personal skin tone. Unfortunately, a mistake happened while posting, and we apologize."
That might not stop Twitter from being salty, though.
But does anything?
Not really.
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