Esprique Mellow Forming Rouge RO620

During the Metro sale last week, I picked up Esprique Mellow Forming Rouge RO620 (S$39). This was launched in July as part of the revamping of Esprique Precious as Esprique with Namie Amuro as the spokesmodel.

Designed in line with Esprique's user-friendly "one stroke" makeup concept, Mellow Forming Rouge is supposed to be a "new, fresh sensation rouge that creates beautiful shine and color with one stroke". It is available in two formulas, glow and color, with ten shades each. The "glow" shades are less pigmented than the "color" shades. The fragrance-free long-lasting lipsticks are supposed to have a highly moisturising effect thanks to ingredients such as hyaluronic acid and honey. The rouge supposedly spreads meltingly across the lips with a light stroke, creating a rich sheen by smoothing any unevenness on the lip's surface, while the clear fine color pigments help to conceal dullness, allowing the true color of the rouge to show through.

The packaging design is very similar to Dior's Serum de Rouge. The lipstick moves up or down with a simple twist of the mechanism at the end of the tube. The Mellow Forming Rouge lipsticks appeared to be extremely soft and almost mushy in the tube, judging by the testers at the counter which all looked wet and shiny. These felt very much like a lipgloss in a lipstick form, as they virtually melt onto the skin. While they do glide onto the lips very smoothly, the formula is so soft that one has to be careful not to exert too much pressure or expose too much of the lipstick as otherwise, it can break off. It is probably also best to keep this in a cool environment. The first time I used this, a couple of tiny bits flaked off from the rouge onto my lips, but they quickly smoothened out and melded together with the rest of the rouge. The colour built up nicely with just a couple of strokes.


Despite that, I fell in love with the shade and the texture instantly. The rouge wears more comfortably than almost all other lipsticks I've tried. Although it has the glossy finish of a lipgloss, it has the lasting power of a lipstick. I wore it for close to four hours without experiencing any feathering or bleeding into the fine lines. RO620 is a lovely medium rose with fine shimmer that is excellent for every day wear.


One drawback is that it contains a mere 1.6g (about 0.056 oz). In comparison, Dior Serum de Rouge contains 0.07oz. Nevertheless, I probably will pick up more shades of Mellow Forming Rouge in the future. Esprique has just launched four new shades as part of its Winter 2011 collection in Japan.

List of ingredients.

You can read more reviews of Mellow Forming Rouge on Makeup & Life and Clover Beauty Inn. Adambeauty.com is retailing the Mellow Forming Rouge for US$30 but it has only three shades in stock at the moment.