Le Métier de Beauté Tickled Pinks Collection by Ken Downing for Spring 2012

Although they are not at all what I was expecting from the advance photos of Le Métier de Beauté's Tickled Pinks Collection by Ken Downing for Spring 2012 ($65), I think the two new shades of Lip Crème, which come packaged together, are even better!  In my photo above, Two Lips is shown on the left, and Mum's the Word is shown on the right. They are nestled into a pretty floral box.

Ken Downing has a gift for forecasting what women will want before we know it. Then he creates demand! In 2011, Downing chose "Koral," also known as tangerine, Pantone's selection for the 2012 Color of the Year, for Le Métier de Beauté's spring/summer collection. For Spring 2012, Ken Downing is thinking pink - "haute pink," for his Tickled Pinks Collection for Le Métier de Beauté. One of the Lip Crèmes is definitely pink - hot pink. The other? Pastel orange. Maybe nude peach as Sabrina dubbed it at The Beauty Look Book. There is no way I'd describe it as petal pink (see my original feature with information from PR here), although it looks that way in the tube.

Downing said, "My pink inspiration was a melding of the beautiful shades and chiffon floral prints that made a strong showing on the spring runways of [fashion designers] Christoper Kane, Erdem (stunning sun dress shown above), and Jonathan Saunders. London really was a spectacular fashion moment with the most gorgeous prints of the season curated in the eclectic and often eccentric way that only an English garden is curated."

These two saturated hues pack a punch in a polite way. Mum's the Word is shown at the top of my arm in my swatch photos, with Two Lips below. Although the advance information said that one would be a Lip Crème and the other a Sheer Brilliance Gloss, they are both marked as Lip Crèmes. Go figure.

Mum's the Word is fuchsia, as you can see. What color would you call Two Lips? I took my best shot above in calling it pastel orange. It's an extremely trendy shade. I like it; it looks very summery on my lips. However, I think Mr. Downing may have had a tangerine hangover when he selected it as a pink shade.

Lip Crèmes are like liquid lipsticks or saturated lip glosses. They are not extremely shiny, but they aren't matte or satin either. They do reflect light nicely as you can see in my photos. More pretty lip color from Le Métier de Beauté to tickle your fancy!

This limited-edition collection is available at Neiman Marcus, neimanmarcus.com, and Bergdorf Goodman. Some stores have received it and are selling out. I got the last one available at the Neiman Marcus store where I purchased it. Other stores haven't seen it yet.

Photos by Best Things in Beauty