NO ONE MOURNS THE WICKED

Posted on September 30, 2013 by Teresa Cannata'

Make-up addicts like me lead a hard life. When your stash needs to be cluttered, you must be careful with your purchases, otherwise you’ll find yourself debating the invisible differences between two red lipsticks that are actually the same, while you know you’re just fooling yourself. At the same time, whenever a new interesting collection is released, your mind says “I want it all”, maybe because it’s attracted by a peculiar inspiration or a name. Oh, make-up items with appealing names are the devil! They attract you on many different levels and you, poor addict, are too weak to say no. NARS was the first brand who got me with this marketing strategy: it was 2008, I was ready to give birth to my daughter and I purchased Orgasm blush just before being hospitalized, because I knew that peachy-pink blush was what I needed to look human after the delivery. Another brand which always plays this trick on me is Deborah Lippmann: the artist behind the label has been a jazz singer for many years and loves music so much that all her polishes have the name of a song.

Now the famous manicurist of the celebrities has taken a step further in the game of appealing product names with her latest limited collection, Wicked, inspired to the Broadway hit musical Wicked: The Untold Story of the Witches of Oz, with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz and a book by Winnie Holzman [1]. First produced in 2003, it’s the 11th longest-running Broadway show; Lippmann celebrates its 10th anniversary with a beautiful nail lacquer trio which is “as wickedly mesmerizing as the characters who inspired them.”

The focus of the narration is not on Dorothy Gale, as in the original novel by L. Frank Baum and in the 1939 film by Victor Fleming, but on the witches whom the Kansas girl meets in the mysterious country she lands to. In the musical, both Glinda (the Good Witch) and Elphaba (the Wicked Witch of the West) attend the Shiz University and are bound by a strange friendship which will take them to the Emerald City and through a series of incredible adventures.

Every shade of the Lippmann collection is inspired to a song of the musical: One Short Day is an emerald glitter clearly reminiscent of the Emerald City where Glinda and Elphaba will live part of their adventures; Defying Gravity is a green crème paying homage to the unique skin colour of Elphaba; Popular is a glistening pink shimmer shade inspired to the pink dress worn by Glinda during the musical number with the same title.

See how beautiful are the three shades together! The different textures allow multiple combinations and juxtapositions, which is basically any nail polish addict’s dream.

Since this is a limited edition collection, be quick to get your trio. You can buy it at Deborah Lippmann or at Sephora; as usual, European customers will probably never have the chance to own this, but don’t throw in the towel: hopefully it will appear for sale at BeautyBay. Fingers crossed.