NARS Velvet Matte lip pencil in Sex Machine is a muted mauve-based pink with the absolute tiniest bit of shimmer. Definitely not enough to give you blinged out 80′s-tastic shimmery mauve lips, but enough that there’s the faint illusion of the pencil being slightly satiny and damp.
I’ve had this pencil for a couple of years and I think I’ve worn it twice, maybe three times at the most. Before I took the picture below and had to give it a quick sharpen so it looked nice and fresh, it still had the original tip shape and bevelled edge on the pencil, just as it was when I first took it out of the box. Nothing about this colour really grabs me, which is a shame. I have other mauve-based pinks like MAC Syrup lipstick and they suit me just fine, but something about Sex Machine on me looks dated, flat and ultra blah. I just can’t make myself rock a lip that makes me look tired and ill, y’know?
The texture of Sex Machine is a lot nicer than my other Velvet Matte pencil in Dragon Girl. Dragon Girl is hard and chalky and occasionally a little crumbly, whereas Sex Machine is smooth and creamy and very easy to apply. Even applied to bare lips, this goes on lickety-split and there’s no dragging or tiresome little gaps along the lipline to smooth out later.
For pale girls, particularly us of the fair skin/pink undertone variety, I say try it before you buy to make sure it is going to lift your face and not be a vitality black hole like it is for me. Asian and Mediterranean skintones could rock this like mad as a nice alternative to beige-based neutral lips. For gals with darker skin, I say skip it entirely – the mauve tint in the pink base is going to translate into a nasty ashy lip. Gross!
NARS Velvet Matte pencils retail for US$24 from narscosmetics.com, and in Australia they can be found at Mecca Cosmetica for AU$50.








