I didn’t get the hype at first, but the moment I tried one of the Rhode lip tints, I was like, “Okay, I get it.” Hailey Bieber’s brand, Rhode, which is newly acquired by the crusties over at Elf (I’m beefing with Elf right now), recently launched in Sephora. And I have to admit, I was excited.
Not because I love Rhode skincare (I think it’s overpriced and average; you can get better formulas with more affordable Korean skincare). Nor because I am a stan of Justin Bieber. I was excited because im addicted to lip balm and I just can’t get enough. I’m addicted and I just can’t get enough…I just can’t get enough. Sorry, ADHD just took me there, and I took a song break. My bad. So yeah, I’m badly addicted to lip balm, and lip products in general are just my steez.
Just A Little Controvers-tea
See that play on controversy; controvers-tea instead because I’m about to talk about Rhode a little. Just a little. I first purchased Rhode from their website a few summers ago. Their summer collection was cutesy. I had just gotten a new iPhone, and I started seeing a bunch of influencers on YouTube with an iPhone case holding their lip balm. All the videos I saw praised the products, talked about Rhode like they were Jesus incarnate, and I fell for it. So, I went on their website, bought a pink phone case, and five lip balms: Salty Tan, Shortcake, Espresso, Toast, and Ribbon.
At first, I loved my lip balms. They were genuinely long-lasting, made my lips glossy like lip gloss, felt good, and so cute in my phone case. But then something happened that destroyed my high: the lip tints that I didn’t use as much or take with me everywhere began to develop a weird texture. They became gritty and weird. Ooohh, I was pissed. But I noticed that my favorite at the time, Ribbon, which was always in my phone, had never gotten gritty. It began to dawn on me that maybe those peptides that made the formula so decadent were solidifying because they weren’t being warmed up by my phone.
So I went on TikTok, my number one source for product news. Unlike my experience on YouTube, I saw the negative reviews, as well as solutions on how to fix my $20 lip balms that were too expensive to break. It all really just pissed me off because why should I have to fix something that I paid $20 for?! I vowed to never repurchase from them again. I felt ashamed of being duped by social media.
However, I am making this post because, clearly, I bought more. The tea really isn’t too piping hot because Rhode acknowledged their mistake and reformulated their lip balms. And the new formula is precisely what I loved about the original, without the risk of cutting your lip from a sharp peptide ball.
I’ve tried Tower 24, Ole Henricksen, Summer Fridays, MAC, Juvias Place, Colourpop, Naturium, all of em. There’s just something about these that I prefer. I wish I could tell you precisely what it is, but the texture is just better than the others. The glitters just seem to sparkle a little more intensely, and they stay on longer than all of my other lip balms outside of my Squirt Balms from MAC.
As someone who routinely says that the brand as a whole is average, the lip treatments/tints exceed expectations. There’s a reason that people are tearing these Sephora stores up trying to get them. The color Jelly bean has a cult following, and I think I may be a part of it!
The Lipstick Diaries 