Zoya Hot Lips Lip Gloss in Marachino: Swatches & Review

Did you know Zoya makes lip products? I didn't--at least, not until I received this Zoya Hot Lips balm as part of a birthday present from Jenna of I'm Still Thinking... (Thanks Jenna!!) Since many of us already know and love Zoya's nail polish, I thought I'd share my experiences with Hot Lips.


The shade I got is called Marachino, so as you might guess, it's a cherry red gloss with a light cherry scent. The scent dissapates pretty quickly, so if you don't like scented lip products, I don't think this one would bother you. The product itself comes in a travel-sized squeeze tube with a rounded applicator. It's the perfect size to pop into your pocket or bag when you're on the go.

 

This gloss starts off as a red shade, as you can see in the swatch, but within a few minutes of applying it to my lips, it morphed into a pinker shade, almost like those pH-reactive lip products we've been hearing so much about lately. Zoya doesn't seem to market these as pH glosses so I'm not sure if it's a feature of the gloss or just something that happened to me personally. Either way, I thought it was pretty cool and I liked both colors Marachino showed on me. Pigmentation is on the more sheer side of spectrum, but there's a nice shine in addition to the tint.


The gloss itself has a satisfying thickness to it, but it's not too sticky. The texture feels silky and rich, so it only takes a little squeeze of gloss to coat your entire lips. On my lips, it felt moisturizing and smooth. Zoya claims this is a lip gloss with the therapeutic properties of a lip balm and in my experience, that description was dead-on. I wore this for about three hours until I took it off to eat dinner and it still looked pretty much the same as when I'd first applied it.


I was really impressed by this gloss! For $6, you get an extremely generous 0.42 oz. of product. (For comparison, MAC lipglasses are 0.17 oz and a standard-sized Burt's Bees lip balm is 0.15 oz.) I like that these have a rich feel to them but with minimal stickiness. Why doesn't Zoya market these more?! They're fabulous!