During the summer, getting lipstick to stay in one place is a never-ending battle. Hot weather, sweat and your skin's natural oils conspire to turn your summery coral or pink lips into abstract watercolour paintings - not in a good way.
Nothing ruins a fresh glam faster than red lippie bleeding into the tiny lines around your mouth, or smudging the second you think about touching your mouth.
Super matte finishes don't suit everyone, and anyway, in hot weather your lips are more prone to drying out, leading to flaky lipstick.
It's almost not worth the effort. Except there's a makeup trend that leans into the summer heat while giving your makeup a contemporary twist.
Enter: the blurred lip.
Although blurred lipstick has existed as a style for many years, most prominently in South Korea where it took off as an ombre-inspired trend, it has been given a new, luxe lease on life by makeup artist Katie Jane Hughes, who can often be spotted rocking the look on Instagram.
Read more: Meet Katie Jane Hughes, the makeup artist bringing real skin back into fashion
Favouring a soft blur over harshly defined lines, the style involves gently buffing your lipstick around the edges of your lips, leaving a velvety finish and the appearance of fuller lips.
It follows much of the same logic as the classic smokey eye: a sultry, lived-in look that enhances the wearer's features, rather than dominates them.
Hughes sums up the look in one post as, "Soft blur on the details, never on the skin", and certainly the style truly pops when paired with glowy skin and refined details.
How to do it
Simply apply your lipstick of choice to the centre of the mouth, avoiding the edges where possible so that there isn't too much build up of product. Taking a small fluffy eyeshadow brush, gently buff the lipstick into your lips, working from the inside out.
For a more opaque finish, apply your lipstick as normal, buffing just along the lip line to create the hazy effect.
Why you should wear it this summer
Rather than fighting to lock lipstick in one place all day, frantically checking for bleeding edges on the fly, the blurred lip adapts your lipstick for hot weather. Buffed into the lips in this way prevents a build-up of product, helps mattify it and makes it less likely to move around.
Of course, the bonus is it creates a romantic, diffused effect that has been incredibly popular on runways and in magazine editorials in recent years.
So popular is the no-lipstick lipstick look, Glossier released their range of Generation G lipsticks, designed to look lived in and understated.
Worried that this trick only works with light colours? Fear not, as Hughes has shown time and time again how adaptable the trick is, creating this striking ruby-red look not too long ago.
