Mission Knock-off

For those of you who aren't aware, a knock-off is an exact copy of another color. You may find the exact shade of your Chanel lipstick at the drugstore from Revlon. What this means is great savings, and if one ever gets discontinued, you have a second option.

The Hunt
Our writers and make-up junkies storm the drugstores and comb the asles with the original lipstick in hand in a true attempt to find a copy. Thanks to the well-stocked testers shelf in Hong Kong, we can test swatches on our hands, not just judging from the tube, or from a sticker or printed color chart. Then we take it out to good natural lighting and evaluate.

Hours later, with our hands marked by pink, red, orange, and some dubious frushia streaks, we would hopefully announce a winner!

This month, our search was for the twin of Bobbi Brown's Brown lipstick, unlike the name suggest, this is not a true brown color, but a very pretty balance of plum, mauve, and brown. It is one of those classic naturals that isn't even vaguely 'nude' or beige. It looks great on us (but then what doesn't). We knew it was going to be hard to find something like it.

And it was. Our search began at Red Earth, where brown earthy colours are a plenty. But after testing what must be 20 to 30 shades that were could-bes, with names like BE279 BE278, and PU297, we were all just a little confused. And the sales assistants weren't pleased with our swatching franzy either. Moreover, we conclude all the matches may be just a little off.

On to Watsons, our favourite drugstore. We went through all of these brands, selected all the shades that was in the same family of color and compared the hand swatches: Face of Australis, Canmake, Fiancee, United Colors of Benetton, ZA, Maybelline, L'Oreal, and Revlon - basically all the lines we can get our hands on. In the process, we found some great shades we want to take home. But when we were beginning to become discourage, we found it!

Revlon Moisture Stay lipstick in Fawn. It's sheer, but if you put on two layers the color start coming through in the same intensity as Brown. If you must be critical about it, as our residential artist and designer Saoin is, it is ever so teenist bit more pinkish (in another words, Bobbi Brown Brown has a little more of the plmmy brown thing). But it's very very close, you would swear they were the same unless you were like us, critically looking for any small difference. Some of us still think it's exactly the same. It is semi gloss/shiny while the original Brown has a creme formula. In fact I think, speaking only for myself, I prefer the Moisture Stay formula.

If you have a close match, please tell us so we can report it. We will try to test colors that are favourites of you, our readers, so if you haven't done so, please complete our colouring survey. Some of our coming-up stories: Laura Mercier Chestnut lip pencil, Stila Natalie lipstick, and MAC Twig (lipstick and lip pencil).