Pound Cake Cosmetics Has Perfected the Art of Red Lipstick

You might’ve already heard about Pound Cake Cosmetics, seeing as how the Black-owned brand has won a Best of Beauty Award two years in a row (2021 and 2022) for best liquid lipstick, but that’s not going to stop me from telling you what makes this tone-inclusive range of red lipsticks so goddamn stunning. To this day, the brand only has one product: Cake Batter Liquid Lipstick, which stretches across six shades that are made with specific skin and undertones in mind. In fact, Pound Cake Cosmetics also offers a color match quiz because the team is determined to bring you your perfect shade of show-stopping red. 

For the record, I got Strawberry but I’m 100 percent telling the truth when I say that I love every single shade I’ve tried thus far. These are the truest one-swipe wonders I’ve possibly ever come across in my ample years as a lipstick devotee, tester, and oftentimes hoarder, which is why I always have to wipe off a decent amount of excess product before proceeding to paint my lips. However, the reason why I adore Cake Batter so much is not just that it’s pigmented to the max.

Here’s a quick story: I can’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve fallen in love with a liquid lipstick only to quickly fall out of my daze after a few hours of uncomfortable dryness and, in some cases, a case of the crumbles (not cute). Such is not the case with Pound Cake (thankfully) and I suspect it has a lot to do with the formula’s inclusion of moisture-retaining emollients, including avocado oil and vitamin E. 

As for some of the other, very scientific-sounding ingredients, I tapped Alex Padgett, a cosmetic chemist based in Raleigh, North Carolina, to help me make sense of them. “When you apply a straight-up oil or emollient blend to your lips, it doesn’t want to stay on very long, so [Pound Cake] is also using ingredients and film-formers like trimethylsiloxysilicate, polyhydroxystearic acid, vp/eicosene copolymer, hydrogenated polydicylclopentadiene, and triethoxycaprylylsilane for improved water resistance and to give the product some long-wear staying power,” she explains.