Kat Von D - Adora Lipstick

It's rare that I find myself lusting after a lippie, usually I'm too busy swooning over eye shadows. Adora captured my attention, however. I'm more of a burgundy-lip girl, I feel more comfortable with a darker lip if I'm not doing a nude lip.

Adora is a beautiful, bright, metallic red. It may well be that it was the metallic aspect that drew me to it. As far as the colour goes, it's a much warmer red than I usually wear. That's not to say that it's verging on orange,  it isn't. It's just not a bright, cool-toned red.

So far, I've experimented with a couple of lip-liners in tandem with Adora. Brick & Redd (both by MAC) are the ones I've tried thus far. I preferred the way Brick looked, purely because Redd is a warmer liner & it made Adora warmer still. It did look very pretty, but not for my preferences.
Cherry & Burgundy (MAC, again) are two more that I'm going to try. Cherry because it's cooler toned, Burgundy to darken the overall colour.

As far as texture goes, this is a metallic matte. It shines a little more than a regular matte, but not in a glossy fashion. As per the norm with mattes, they can be quite drying. A good lip scrub (I like Lush's Mint Julips) and letting some balm soak in before applying should do the trick. I made the mistake of wearing this for the first time after a cold. Dry lips look worse in Adora than any other matte I've tried, probably because the metallic finish seems to accentuate the dryness.

Because it is a matte, it stays on well. I managed three or four hours, including eating & drinking, before it needed reapplying.

Adora - inside with flash

Adora - inside with flash

The above swatches do make it seem a little more orange, there's more red to Adora in reality.


The packaging is beautiful, as with the majority of Kat's Sephora line. Tattoo-style roses adorn the outside of the tube. What's different with Adora is that the roses are metallic red, usually they're white. The best feature of the packaging has to be the clear bottom end of the lipstick tube. If you store your lipsticks upside down, you'll have no trouble finding it as the actual colour is visible through the bottom.

Adora is a stunning red that would look great on warmer tones but shouldn't be counted out for those with a cooler skin tone. A little work with the right liner & it could well suit anyone.