As a beauty editor who gets to try a lot of beauty products, both luxury and drugstore, each month, I've come to the conclusion that most of the time you get what you give when buying makeup. Most of my favorite products, unfortunately, are on the pricier side — especially matte lipsticks. On any given day, you'll find me wearing Glossier Generation G, Kat Von D Beauty Everlasting Liquid Lipstick, or Fenty Beauty Mattemoiselles, all of which cost $18 or more.
It's really rare that I, a boujee-leaning person, find a product under $15 that I truly love and want to use on a daily basis. Then Maybelline launched a new matte formula that only costs $8 at Target — and now my whole view on matte lipstick has changed.
Maybelline has just introduced these SuperStay Ink Crayons ($8, Target) to the world, and I've fallen deeply in love.
This unique matte formula comes in 12 shades that work on a wide variety skin tones. They cost $8 if you buy them from Target, but you can also find them at Ulta and most other drugstores at a similar price.
This brand claims the lipstick can glide effortlessly, can be easily tapered with its built-in sharpener, and is impermeable to smudges and transfer. Determined to prove it wrong, I wore it for three days straight and was taken aback by how impressed I was.
To show you just how crazy-good these lipsticks are, I wore the shade Laugh Louder for an entire day and documented the whole thing.
What you're seeing above is me right after I applied the Ink Crayon — the final step in my regular morning beauty routine before I got dressed and headed outside to catch a train to my office. When Maybelline claimed this lipstick had an easy glide, it wasn't lying. The phrase "Ink Crayon" is also a perfect way to describe the way this lipstick looks and feels as it's being applied.
Here's a close-up of the Ink Crayon as it was drying down.
It takes two or three swipes to build the crayon to full opacity — if you apply it lightly with a single swipe, it'll look more like a stain than a matte lipstick, if you're into that. I sure am, but to showcase how durable this formula is, I applied it rather aggressively before leaving the house.
Here I am around 9 a.m. right after my regular commute, during which almost all of my other makeup sweat off.
This is the exact reason I almost never bother with makeup during summer in the city. The smog and humidity degrades most of my makeup the second I step outside because I am a Very Sweaty Person; the fact that the Maybelline crayon survived without a hitch even at this early point in my day is already impressive in itself.
I didn't begin to see any fading of the lipstick until 1 p.m., after I'd had an iced coffee, several glasses of water, and lunch.
And as you can see in the photo above, the fading is very minimal and exclusive to the very center of my upper lip. The formula is so sheer-feeling and comfortable that I felt no anxiety about swiping on another layer in that faded spot.
Shortly after refreshing my one faded spot, I continued drinking from my glass water bottle, which hadn't seen a lick of lipstick transfer all day.
I know, I know — anyone could post a photo of their blank water bottle and cry "transfer-free," but you're just going to have to trust me when I say the photo on the right was taken seconds following the photo on the left. Full mouth-to-bottle contact occurred, and not a single molecule of pigment moved.
The photo on the right, I should also note, was taken around 2 p.m., after an entire half day of drinking from it consistently. I didn't clean the rim at all — I didn't really need to.
Post touch-up, my lipstick lasted from around 1 p.m. all the way through the end of my workday at 5:30 and then through post-work drinks.
Truly, my only complaints about this lipstick (and I complain a lot about everything all the time) are that its sharpener isn't the easiest to use — the lipstick can get smushed by it — and that it only comes in pink and red hues (but who knows, maybe the line will expand some day).
Nevertheless, I've definitely found my new staple red lipstick and am very thankful I no longer have to justify spending $20 on a single lipstick. Maybelline, YOU DID THAT.
All in all, this $8 crayon ticks almost all my required boxes for a perfect lipstick — even by luxury or high-end standards.
This affordable formula overall:
- Has a buildable and lightweight formula that feels more like a stain
- Doesn't transfer, smudge, cake, or dry up
- Doesn't have the best sharpener, but doesn't really need it if you have a steady hand
- Lasts. Through. EVERYTHING.
- Comes off easily with an oil-based cleanser
TLDR: I give it five out of five stars — and I'm going to have a difficult time justifying spending more than $10 on lipstick from here on out.
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