Lipstick

More than thirty years ago, Poppy King set out to make the “thinking-woman’s” lipstick.

Photography by Rose Callahan

Words by Laura Neilson

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Any woman who puts on a bold shade of red lipstick before stepping out to conquer her day—feeling as if she could just as easily conquer the world—knows and understands the radically transformative effects a few swipes of color can induce. Lipstick maven Poppy King certainly did when she launched her namesake line of shades in 1991. Now King, 51, who lives in New York, is back with her original matte lipstick collection, only it’s evolved to include ingredients sourced and produced only in her native Australia. The same, but different…like any dear friend you’ve come to know over the last 30 years.

Growing up, it wasn’t really makeup that mesmerized me—it was lipstick.

Whereas all other cosmetics are mostly to correct or enhance, lipstick is about more of a psychological change. Or at least as much as it is a cosmetic change. And I think that's what always drew me to it. I wouldn’t have had the words to describe it then, but when I first played with makeup and put lipstick on that first time, I just noticed immediately how differently I felt on the inside.

I developed this nearly singular obsession with lipstick when I was about six or seven. It was around a time when my father was dying. He died very young—at 40—from skin cancer. Mortality is a hard thing for adults to deal with, let alone children. It was a time of great confusion. The effect of lipstick made me think of a future self that was going to be able to understand all this.

My mother was very, very avant-garde, and she would wear this oxblood red lipstick that she got from London from a store called Biba. And it was very red. So when I would play dress-up with her lipstick, I wasn't putting on a shimmery pink or something coral, but oxblood, matte red lipstick.

The reason why so many women love my lipstick is that I’m not preaching to the converted. I’ve always wanted to be able to buy—but was never able to find—this “thinking-woman’s lipstick” that was connected to my mind in terms of how it was named and how it was marketed, that would take me seriously as a female. But there’s some cheekiness and levity, too.

I’m currently in the process of re-releasing my first lipstick range from the 90s, which was named after the seven deadly sins.

I’ve been doing this for 30 years now, and people ask a question I still can’t ever answer: ‘Who is your target market?’ Every time, I just get stumped. I say, ‘Well, anyone it appeals to.’ I don’t believe in sectioning out a population and trying to create a product for just that group.

I purchased the lavender boa on my last trip to Australia @chapelstbazaar, where I have been shopping vintage for almost 40 years, from my teenage years to now. It is my favorite shop in the world.

My signature color throughout the years has always been varying forms of red. I don't do colors that can't be found in the human body or in nature in some way, shape, or form.

COVID gave me two beautiful gifts in very ugly packages. One of them was that I really learned—as a single woman in Manhattan—how to take care of myself: how to be my own nurse, how to cook myself back to health…how to do all these things.

Up until COVID, I was the cliché “Sex And The City” type, you know. I had New Yorker magazines in my oven—that sort of thing. But Covid really taught me how to be more about home and hearth and how to really nurture it.

Lipstick Heels: Alberto Guardiani

The other gift that came out of Covid— the long periods of isolation sort of killed the relevance of lipstick. At least to the outside world. It turned me more inward, and I started to paint and sculpt, and I actually turned my unsold lipsticks into artwork.

When Barney’s closed down, my accountant told me that I couldn’t afford NOT to sell the inventory that we had. I didn’t want to sell it anywhere else than Barney’s, so I took it and painted all of this artwork surrounding me. Once I finish with the excess inventory, I’m going to have a show with all the pieces. I’ll sell them also, so it’s going to turn the inventory into money in a different form.

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