Choosing your cosmetics used to mean some pretty straightforward color selections: pink, red, maybe purple. No longer. The new world of choices involves more intense decisions: Will you choose Temptress? Vixen? Teasing Flirt? Or perhaps a bit of Tie Me to the Bedpost blush?
Sexy names are overrunning cosmetics counters, making a simple task such as buying blush seem like a trip to the curtained-off section of your local DVD rental place. Customers relish the promise and thrill inherent in the racy monikers, and beauty companies welcome the chance to call red something other than red.
"Makeup is hope in a jar. Now, if you go into any cosmetics emporium, department store or Bath and Body Works, you can find every possible hope," says Jean Godfrey-June, beauty director at Lucky magazine. "You can try on a different identity but not look different."
Even a mild name can inspire. One of Godfrey-June's favorites, MAC Juicy Pink lip gloss, has a slightly shocking name and looks shockingly pink in the tube. In reality, it only adds a bit of shimmer to her lips.
"No one knows you're wearing it. But you do," she says. "Sexy makeup is for even more modest women than closet sexy-lingerie wearers."
About 20 percent of new color cosmetics shades fell into this hot-and-heavy trend during the first half of the year, according to Karen Grant, senior beauty analyst at market research firm NPD.
"This year is when we really saw the push toward really sexy names. It was really across categories — nails to lipsticks," Grant says. "The shade name that's most likely to make you blush: 'Pussy Galore' (named for the character in "Goldfinger," one of the early James Bond movies). "I'm amazed that it could be used then, let alone now."
It's not just edgy companies like Nars (the successful Orgasm blush, launched in 1999), MAC (Velvet Teddy lipstick) or Benefit (Dr. Feelgood face balm). Traditional mainstream brands are in the game, too, including Lancome (Exotic Kiss lip gloss), Clinique (Nudey nail polish) and Chanel (Boudoir rouge).
Color names that make you smile — or, even better, blush — help add distinction to otherwise similar products.
"There are only so many colors for makeup, only so many reds and pinks — a red is a red is a red — but some of the names make them stand out," says Nina Sisselman, vice president of creative development for High Maintenance, the company with the beauty license for Playboy. "If you're in Sephora, with hundreds of choices in front of you, the name, the package and the color makes a difference."
All things being equal, including color and texture, Renata Faiman of Los Angeles would pick a lip gloss with a racy name over boring Pink No. 6. But, says the 25-year-old public-relations executive, quality matters most. "Always the color comes first, and then I look at the name and say, 'Oooh, that's so cute."'
Another plus: No long-term commitment to changing your appearance is necessary. These are, after all, products that disappear with the swipe of a cotton ball.
"Every woman has many sides of sexy," says Christine Beauchamp, CEO of Victoria's Secret Beauty. The line recently launched a collection called Very Sexy Makeup, with some compacts carrying the words "Very Sexy" inside.
Beauchamp wears Passion lip gloss, a mosaic blush called Wild Child and Sultry eye shadow. "We all love telling each other what shades we're wearing," she says. "Saying the names out loud makes you giggle, and I see customers really enjoying the shade names when they're at the makeup bar in the stores."
But as cosmetic manufacturers keep pushing for new ways to stand out, will names become too hot to handle?
Grant predicts that if companies go too far, shoppers' intrigue will turn to repulsion. Pout's Carpet Burn lipstick, a dark black-currant color, actually made the NPD staff gasp — and Grant notes she doesn't see that one around anymore. (A Pout spokeswoman says the color was discontinued in the United States, not because of the name but because or a regular turnover of colors. It is, however, still available on Pout's British Web site.)
Striptease, described as a soft nude pink lipstick (coincidence?), is one of Pout's top sellers here. The best-selling lip gloss? Pop My Bubble.
At Victoria's Secret, a team develops an entire personality for a line, complete with a script and voice, much like the early stages of scripting a movie. Once team members have a list of shade names, they "cast" them using what they think are the most appropriate colors. A deep red became Slow Burn, a nude color Wet, and gold was christened G — "G for gold, G for G-string or G for whatever else you're thinking," Beauchamp says, laughing.
The names match the brand image, she adds: sexy but not X-rated.
The Playboy brand has a different connotation. Tie Me to the Bedpost blush and Mile High mascara fit right in the overall picture for Playboy, which also named all of its eyeliners for bar-worthy pickup lines, including "Are Those Real?" As Sisselman says, "If anyone can push the bubble, Playboy can push it. We're not for Sally Homemaker next door."
But Lucky's Godfrey-June says creating a good, wearable product is still the most important thing.
"Every woman has a drawer of makeup that she doesn't wear. She buys something that's a stretch or seems wild, but if it's a color that she can't wear, she won't buy it again," Godfrey-June says. "If you look like a clown, you won't wear something called You Win a Million Dollars."
