Two drugstore stain glosses: Wet N Wild Fergie Vicious Varnish High Shine Lip Stain in Flawless and Milani Power Lip Lasting & Moisturizing Gloss Stain in Cabernet Blend

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It's been a while. Oops. In the meantime, I managed to get a part time job, so I'm at least nominally employed. And my cat got sick again, which makes that about the 500th time in the last year. She's fine now, but I think that if she decides she needs any additional medical care, she's going to have to get a job and stop mooching off of me.

There have been other distractions, but let's just get back to the damned makeup, shall we?

I got both of these stain-gloss things a few months ago at about the same time, so it makes sense to me to review them together.

Wet N Wild Fergie Vicious Varnish High Shine Lip Stain in Flawless and Milani Power Lip Lasting & Moisturizing Gloss Stain in Cabernet Blend

Let's start with Wet N Wild Fergie Vicious Varnish High Shine Lip Stain in Flawless ($3.50). One thing both of these products have in common is long fucking names. The Wet N Wild stuff has a really interesting, slippery, and almost gelatinous texture. Sounds nice, right? Ha. Well, the closest thing I have to it is a L'Oreal Colour Caresse Wet Shine Stain (review here), which makes sense, since that's also a stain-gloss. The L'Oreal's texture is a little stickier, though. I've never used anything quite like this Wet N Wild stain. I do like how it feels, but it might take getting used to for some people. It's packaged in your typical gloss tube with a particularly long and flexible doe foot applicator.

Wet N Wild Fergie Vicious Varnish High Shine Lip Stain in Flawless

Flawless is a bright fuchsia pink. It's quite opaque and very glossy. It stays smooth and slippery on your lips - a difference from the L'Oreal gloss I mentioned above, which set to a thicker/stickier consistency. Because it stays slippery and it's opaque, it has more chance of transferring to your teeth than other things might. It's comfortable to wear and not at all drying. It also wears off evenly and leaves a nice, bright stain behind. It is what it says it is: high shine + stain. The photo below was taken after a few hours of wear.

Wet N Wild Fergie Vicious Varnish High Shine Lip Stain in Flawless

The Milani Power Lip Lasting & Moisturizing Gloss Stain in Cabernet Blend ($6.50), though its name suggests otherwise, is quite a different product. It's packaged in a click-pen brush, which I have to say is probably my least favorite type of makeup packaging/applicator. As usual, it works like this: click-click-click-click-click-nothing, click-click-click-click-click-click-click-nothing, click-click-SPLOOGE. Every time. The product itself, though it is a liquid/gel, is much thicker, stickier, and somehow drier than the WNW. Using the brush to apply it is a similar experience to applying regular lipstick with a brush. It's fairly slow and hard to spread around, but you can apply multiple layers to build it up.

Milani Power Lip Lasting & Moisturizing Gloss Stain in Cabernet Blend

As usual, I am not great at describing colors, but I'll try, because this one is tricky. It's a bit of a chameleon. In some lighting, it's almost like a dark fuchsia. In other lighting, it's more of a berry-wine color. Under no lighting, however, does it look particularly like the packaging, which is the only thing you can see when you buy it (i.e. there's no window revealing the actual stuff inside or anything). The tube, and the name, Cabernet Blend, suggest a dark wine color. The tube also has shimmer in it, which the gloss does not contain. The difference in color between the tube and the product is probably partly to do with the difference in opacity: since the product itself is a little sheerer, it's going to look brighter with it's on your face.

Milani Power Lip Lasting & Moisturizing Gloss Stain in Cabernet Blend

This stain-gloss feels pretty sticky on the lips, but it's not uncomfortable. Because it's thick, it stays where you put it. It is quite drying, however, and it does not stain evenly. It wears off a lot like a lipstick would, leaving behind a ring around the outer edges of the lips and some staining in the lip lines. In general, I think this product is something like a thick, somewhat glossy liquid lipstick. Despite its name, I would not call it a gloss or a stain, and it certainly isn't moisturizing.

Milani Power Lip Lasting & Moisturizing Gloss Stain in Cabernet Blend

I think the above photo might actually make the stain look a bit better than it does in person. Keep in mind that my lips are pretty pink to begin with, so most of what you see there is my natural color, and the line across the upper edge of my top lip is not a shadow, but leftover product. This Milani product is a pretty color, but it's not the most pleasant thing to use, and it doesn't do what it claims to do.

Of the two of these, I much prefer the Wet N Wild stain gloss (especially for the price). It's more comfortable to wear and does a much nicer job of staining. I've been tempted to buy more, but the only other color that I've seen in my little Walgreens that really appeals to me is the red, and I certainly do not need another fucking glossy red.