Some of the most beautiful things growing around us have names, (and histories), that sound like they belong in a grimoire.Which, naturally, meant we had to name lip gloss after them.

The Poisonous Lip Drips were created around that contradiction: beauty and danger, colour and darkness, something beautiful enough to draw you closer while quietly warning you not to touch.Thankfully, ours are considerably safer to put on your lips.

The poisonous plants and fungi are inspiration only. They are not ingredients in the Lip Drips.

What is inside those ornate little vials is a collection of high-shine, non-sticky vegan lip glosses spanning blood reds, poisonous greens, bruised purples, holographic blacks and strange multichrome shifts.....And one pigeon.....We'll get to the pigeon.

Why Poisonous Plants?

Humans have had a complicated relationship with poisonous plants for centuries.We've feared them, used them medicinally, woven folklore around them and planted some of them in our gardens simply because they're beautiful.

Take belladonna, or deadly nightshade. Its glossy black berries and purple flowers look almost inviting despite the toxicity for which the plant became notorious.

Foxglove produces towers of spectacular bell-shaped flowers, yet compounds derived from the plant played an important role in the history of heart medicine.

Wolfsbane, also known as aconite, has those extraordinary hooded purple-blue flowers alongside a considerably darker reputation in folklore and poisoning.

Then there are poisonous fungi, from unmistakable red-and-white fly agaric to ergot, a fungus with a particularly strange place in medical and social history.

They are beautiful, fascinating and occasionally terrifying. Basically, excellent lipstick names.

Turning Poison Into Colour

The names weren't chosen and then slapped onto random colours. The fun part was translating the feeling of each name into makeup.

Bloodroot became vivid scarlet with reflective red shimmer.

Belladonna became a translucent black a smoky veil rather than an opaque black lip.

Wolfsbane became an intense royal blue shifting into violet-purple.

Aconite moves through jewel-like emerald and gold.

Oleander burns through blood-red, copper and gold.

And Fly Agaric became something almost impossible to describe as a single colour: deep bronze-red shifting through hot pink, antique gold and green.

That's also why so many of the Lip Drips are multichromes.They aren't supposed to sit still.Move your head, change the light or put them over another colour and suddenly you're looking at something different.

The Ones That Transform

Some Lip Drips are designed to bring plenty of colour on their own.Others are deliberately sheer.And sheer doesn't mean ineffective.

A transparent or lightly tinted base allows shifting pigments to interact with whatever is underneath. On bare lips you might see a delicate wash of shimmer; put exactly the same gloss over black and suddenly the shift explodes.

Liberty Cap, for example, is almost transparent on the lips with pink-lilac, gold and green shifting shimmer. Over black, those pigments become dramatically more visible.

Brugmansia behaves similarly, moving from a delicate pink-gold shimmer on bare lips to antique gold and green over a dark base.

Then there's Hemlock, where the base is essentially there to carry the holographic sparkle. Wear it alone for glassy rainbow reflection or put it over black and let chaos commence.

So if you've ever received one of our Lip Drips and thought:"That looks different in the vial..."Turn your head.Then put it over black. Trust the process. 😂

But Which Poison Do I Pick?

We know. There are a lot of them. So rather than making you stare at 15 multichrome swatches until your eyes stop understanding colour, here's the short version.

If you want…	Try…
A sheer smoky black	Belladonna
Black with holographic sparkle	Nightshade
Clear holographic sparkle	Hemlock
Intense blue shifting purple	Wolfsbane
Emerald green shifting gold	Aconite
Teal, purple and deep-blue multichrome	Bluebell
Scarlet red with reflective shimmer	Bloodroot
Warm blood-red with copper and gold	Oleander
A sheer transforming multichrome	Liberty Cap
Pink with a warm golden shift	Angel's Trumpet
Peach-copper and gold multichrome	Ergot
Bronze-red multichrome drama	Fly Agaric
Purple with antique gold and bronze	Foxglove

 

There are more shades across the collection, but the basic rule is: If subtle isn't your thing, we've probably got your poison.

 

And Then There's a Pigeon

Most of this collection can be explained through poisonous plants, fungi and our longstanding inability to leave anything vaguely witchy alone.Cher Amie cannot.

Cher Amie exists because I love pigeons.🐦 They're so common in our towns and cities that we barely look at them.And that's a shame.Because actually look at a pigeon.What initially appears to be an ordinary grey bird suddenly isn't grey at all.

Move around one in sunlight and its feathers flash petrol blue, emerald green, turquoise and violet. They're basically wandering around town wearing multichrome eyeshadow while everyone calls them boring.I wanted that in a Lip Drip.

So Cher Amie has a translucent cool grey base filled with shifting blue, violet and green shimmer.On bare lips, it's soft and slightly strange, a smoky grey wash with flashes of colour as the light catches it.Put it over black and...PIGEON.Full pigeon. Petrol blue. Teal. Green. Violet. Oil-slick iridescence. And I mean that as the highest possible compliment.

Why Cher Amie?

There's another story hidden in the name. During the First World War, a homing pigeon named Cher Ami became famous for carrying a message from an isolated American unit during the Meuse-Argonne offensive in 1918.

Cher Ami was reportedly badly wounded but still completed the flight, and the delivered message helped communicate the unit's position. Our shade is Cher Amie — dear friend — and isn't intended as a historical recreation or anything quite so serious.But the story felt fitting.

A little gloss inspired by an animal routinely dismissed as ordinary, carrying a name associated with a pigeon remembered for being anything but.So Cher Amie became our odd one out.No poisonous flower.No dangerous fungus.

Just a small tribute to resilience, loyalty and an animal I think deserves considerably better PR.

Grey Was Never Really Grey

That's probably the thread running through the entire collection. Look closer:

Belladonna isn't simply black.

Aconite isn't simply green.

Wolfsbane isn't simply blue.

Cher Amie certainly isn't simply grey.

Colour changes depending on the light around it, the colour underneath it and the angle from which you see it. Maybe that's why we've always been drawn to multichromes at VE. They're difficult to put neatly into a box. And we can relate.

A Few Lip Drip Tips Before You Go

• Want maximum multichrome shift? Try your gloss over black.
• Want something softer? Wear the sheer shades directly over bare lips.
• Using a lipstick underneath? Let it set first before adding your Lip Drip.
• Don't assume the colour in the vial is the final result. Multichrome pigments need movement and changing light to show their full shift.
• Experiment. Putting a sheer Lip Drip over red, purple, brown or blue can create completely different results.

Every Poisonous Lip Drip comes in our ornate wearable vial, so it can also be worn on a cord or chain.

All shades are 100% vegan and cruelty-free, with a lightweight, non-sticky gloss formula.

And, once again for anyone understandably concerned by the collection name:

There is no belladonna in Belladonna.
There is no wolfsbane in Wolfsbane.
There is no hemlock in Hemlock.

And there is absolutely no pigeon in Cher Amie.