After much begging, pleading, meme-ing, and well-intended bullying from her extensive (and at times, rabid) fan base, Fenty Beauty founder Rihanna has finally released a vibrant selection of lip liners—a product that beauty enthusiasts have been requesting from the Bajan mogul for years.
I must admit that I am a member of this fan base. I’ve been following Fenty Beauty since its 2017 launch. While September of that year marked the beginning of 11th grade for me, it was also the month Rihanna changed the beauty industry for good, releasing a 40-shade foundation line that ushered in a new movement for diverse shade ranges in masstige beauty products. With a Sephora located only a block away from school and spending money set aside from a summer serving snacks poolside, a Fenty purchase became inevitable. As a mixed girl with a caramel overtone and yellow undertones, I’d played around with drugstore products as a tween, but they left my face looking ashen, muddied, or worse. Rihanna’s Pro Filt’r Soft Matte Longwear Liquid Foundation was the first product that truly fit and complemented my skin tone.
Seven years later, but with no less interest, I am now testing Fenty’s new Trace’d Out Pencil Lip Liner collection. With 10 universal shades and the promise of a creamy, transfer-resistant, long-lasting formula, I set out to see whether RiRi delivered this time around.
I have a pretty sharp cupid’s bow with a deep dip, so defining every point and angle can be tedious and messy with a subpar applicator. When using other lip products, it’s hard to get a precise line without sharpening my pencil to stab-worthy levels, but I’m happy to say this is not the case with Rihanna’s Trace’d Out. Fresh out of the box, the pencil was pointed but soft, sturdy but still had a malleable quality that made detailed application easy. A little goes a long way with Trace’d Out. I used the shade Coal Blooded, a dark brown, and found one gentle swipe of the liner around my outer lip was all I needed to get the perfectly pigmented line. As someone with two-toned lips, sometimes it’s difficult to get the same hue, even if I’m using the same product. Trace’d Out is made with pure pigment, unlike most other liners that have a white base; to my delight, the color stayed consistent on both my top and bottom lips.
Extra points to the Fenty team for delivering on the liners’ smudge-proof promise. After applying a bit of Fenty Treatz Lip Oil on top, not one speck of liner moved or bled out of place. (I would be remiss not to devote a section of praise to the oil itself: I used the new shade Black Cherry over my Coal Blooded-traced lips—one of Rihanna’s favorite shade combos, according to the brand. Black Cherry may be the best-smelling lip product I’ve worn in a while, and one layer is enough to last for hours, through straw-sips of coffee and all.)
I decided to up the “anti” on my review by incorporating another one of Rihanna’s favorite combos into my real daily routine: riding the subway. I have to be able to do my makeup on the shaky, speedy train on my way to work. So I sat down on one of the plastic seats and pulled out my liner in the shade Extra Thigh. I was able to apply the product in butter-soft sweeps, despite the lurches and bumps of the subway. Topped off with the new Gloss Bomb Stix (a high-shine gloss) in the shade Is It Fu$$y, the kissable combo garnered me compliment after compliment all morning. With the addition of these products, a makeup-bag void I didn’t know existed has been filled. I’ll be buying more colors, to say the least.