Eyes might be the window to one's soul, but what about the lips?! Those poor, abused pillows of love, more often than not battered into trout-y submission nowadays. Why don't we care more for them? After all, while one can peer into your eyes in an attempt to read your deepest, darkest secrets, the only way they're truly going to figure it out, is if you say it... aloud. Which requires the use of said lips. As the proud owner of two healthy lips, I've learned to love lipstick and glosses only in my mid-twenties.

Every lip product I previously happened to buy in a fit of impulsiveness (they always look so beautiful on display!) ended up looking muddy once on me, a la Jennifer Lopez in her Fly Girl days. It was only after I realised that colour, brightness and texture would translate into an eye-catching (in a good way) pout that I starting praying to the god of gloss. MAC was probably the first brand to turn me onto the power of lipstick and lipgloss after my first tube of Ruby Woo Me bought on the King's Road. The makeup artist (who I have since seen at fashion week every year... clearly she knows what she's doing) plucked it from the display and defty applied it to me, a proud smile spreading across her face. 

Since then, I have collected no less than three dozen tubes, pots, sticks, crayons and what not for my lips. Revlon, Lipstick Queen, MAC, Dior, Korres, Burts Bees, Serge Lutens, Bobbi Brown, Smashbox, NARS... the list goes on.

So any time I receive a lip product to review, I get rather giddy. The latest brand to cross my desk is the Australian beauty brand Lanolips, which I was keen to try especially because I had just read about it in Australian Vogue, and I used to be a big user of Dr. Lipp Original Nipple Balm (another 100% medical grade Lanolin product).

Description

Lanolips is a lip balm and gloss made from 100% medical grade Lanolin (which is, just as a bit of random trivia, 24x more expensive than regular Lanolin). It comes in 5 shades - Rose, Apples, Sunshine, Dark Honey and Clear. All you need is the tiniest bit of the coloured gloss on the lips as it goes a long way.

Rose and Dark Honey are beautiful nude shades, Sunshine is a coral and Apple is a bright red. The clear Lanolips can also be used on dry skin, cuticles or even as a gloss on the eyelids. 

It's slightly tacky to the touch and the coloured glosses are less dense than the ointment so you need to apply less pressure to the tube. They slide right onto the lips and are surprisingly un-sticky for a gloss. They hold moisture for ages and my lips never ever feel dry or chapped after wearing it (which is a problem I've found with some other balms and glosses, like Korner's gloss and, at first, Korres's lip butter (which now feels like heaven... either re-formulation or my lips adjusted). 

The Good

The nude colours are the perfect foil to smoky eyes or just for a no-makeup makeup look. Lanolin is super moisturising, there are few ingredients, the tinted balms have SPF 15 and the clear product is a multi-tasker. Plus, there are 6 more products in the works.

The Bad

The texture is slightly sticky, but that goes for most all glosses. And it's, sadly, only available in Australia on Adore Beauty.

Lanolips retails for AUD $13.95 to $17.95.

Update on 10.5.2009 by Jessica Teas (née Gearhart)

Lanolips is delving into the big bad world of bodycare as well with the launch of 6 body products (date TBC).