Hey lovelies!
A while ago I did a little shop from frangrancedirect.com a fantastic discounted makeup and perfumes online store. They stock well known brands such as Maybelline, Revlon and Essie to name but a few and they also have cosmetic brands that aren’t so well known. I picked up a few things, including these Manhattan ‘Soft Mat’ lip creams. They were 99p each and because the NYX lip creams are so inaccessible in the UK (or ridiculously overpriced) I’ve been on the look out for similar products.
Manhattan is a German cosmetics company and there’s not much else to say about it I'm afraid, other than the fact that I’ve never seen them anywhere else before other than fragrance direct. The packaging for all matte lip creams I have seen so far seem to look awfully similar – is that just me or is this the case?? The link for these on the fragrancedirect website is here.
In any case, these contain 6.5ml of product. Unfortunately the two colours I got are not named but they are numbered; the red one is 45H and the coral colour is 31S. The packaging is nice and simple -nothing fancy or special, just the colour of the product on the outside and a rubber lid with an ‘M’ as their logo on the top. It has a pretty standard doe-foot applicator which makes the product really easy to apply.
I picked the colours on a whim, mainly because it was pretty unclear what they would look like anyway from the online swatches (as always ._,) but I’m over the moon about the red one! It’s most noticeable in the second picture, and slightly too bright in the first (British lighting issues..) but its a blue toned red that looks simply amazing. I don’t own Mac’s Ruby Woo but it looks similar to that – ever so glamorous!
I loved everything about this when I first tried it on (for lip swatches head over to my instagram @theblushinggiraffe) It is the smoothest matte product I have ever tried and on the packaging it states in German ‘Ein wunderbar softes..’ and I have to agree with them, it is so very soft! The thing I was most pleasantly surprised about was how non-patchy the application was and and none of the lines or roughness on my lips were accentuated at all. Shade wise it is a really stunning red colour and although I don’t often have occasions to go to where red is the colour of lippie choice, whenever I get the chance to be this will be on my lips!
When first applied for a few minutes it doesn’t quite look matte, but after a short while it does dry down and it lasts for a very decent amount of time (I'm terrible with timing the exact lasting power of lip products when I’m in the house!) but I’m sure it would exceed your average lipstick due to it’s texture.
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The lighter coral colour is also the same with consistency but I felt like it was slightly patchy when applying. It also looks pretty odd alone with my medium skin tone, however it looks lovely with some gloss/ a cocktail of other products.
Overall I’m really impressed with these and next time I make an order from there I will be ordering the other colours for sure. They beat my experience with the Collection one hands down both in pigmentation, lasting power and colour payoff/consistency and I highly recommend them to anyone looking for accessible and reasonable matte lip creams!
Final Verdict:
Product rating: 9
Pros: The red colour is gorgeous! The consistency is lovely, SUPER AFFORDABLE, long lasting colour and not overly drying on the lips.
Cons: There isn’t a huge colour selection.
Repurchase? Without a doubt! I have so many products to review and try out and more importantly USE that I’m not planning on makeup shopping for a while, but in a few months these will be jumping straight into my cart :)
Do you enjoy using matte lip creams?
