This Lightweight Lipstick Made Me Fall in Love With Wearing Lipstick Again

As much as I love all things beauty and skincare, it takes a lot to get me to even put on lipstick. I've never been a fan of lipsticks (honestly, I used to be a lipstick hater) because so many of them can feel greasy, smudge easily, or significantly dry out my already dehydrated lips. My approach to makeup these days is akin to my comfort-first approach to clothing, and it would really take something extraordinary for me to want to wear lip color again—but that's exactly how I'd describe Merit Beauty's new Signature Lip Lipstick.

Lightweight, moisturizing, and gorgeous with tons of pigment, Signature Lip is one of the best new beauty products to come across my desk recently. It's so good that it actually makes me excited to put on makeup again. The brand sent me a sample before the launch, and after testing it out for days, I can already see it becoming my go-to product anytime I want to make my lips pop.

To buy: $26; meritbeauty.com.

The new lipstick follows in the footsteps of the brand's incredibly popular Shade Slick Lip Oil, which not only gives your lips some stunning color, but also hydrates them with skincare ingredients to be a double-duty beauty product. Along with squalane, sunflower seed oil, and raspberry oil to properly moisturize your lips, the Signature Lip is infused with papaya enzyme to help soothe sensitive lips, and vitamin C to reduce fine lines.

The results are seriously moisturizing. Even after wearing it for eight hours a day, my lips remained as soft and hydrated as they were in the morning after I slathered on some Vaseline. Since it's a lightweight lipstick, Merit's Signature Lip won't immediately give you as much pigment as more matted, thick alternatives upon the first swipe. But it compensates for that with its super buildable formula, which doesn't easily smudge, either—even under my KN95 face mask.

It also impressed me with how smoothly it glides on. Merit's new lipstick really feels more like putting on a non-greasy lip balm than your typical lipstick. It certainly doesn't have the strange, waxy smell that can sometimes come with lipsticks, and it feels so soft and lightweight against my lips that I almost forget I'm wearing it in the first place.

I can't think of a better lipstick to wear on days when I'm swamped but in need of a quick touch of color that doesn't distract me by drying my lips out. Shop Merit Beauty's new Signature Lip here—its limited-edition set of four colors is already sold out, so don't wait to try the new hero product.