What This Site Actually Is
Lipstick Queen is an independent blog built around one narrow obsession: lipstick. Not the whole beauty aisle, not skincare, not haircare. Lipstick, specifically, and everything that comes with picking the right one.
That means shade matching by undertone, application techniques that hold up past the first coffee of the day, and reviews written by someone who actually wore the product for a full day, not someone who reworded a press release.
Who Writes This
Andreea Sandu runs Lipstick Queen. She’s a working makeup artist based in Bucharest, doing makeup for weddings / editorial shoots / TV / everyday clients since 2010. Over 15 years behind the brush now, and counting.
Clients kept asking her the same handful of questions, over and over, so at some point she just started writing the answers down instead of repeating herself. Which red won’t turn orange on a warm undertone. Why lipstick bleeds into fine lines and what actually stops it. Whether liquid lipstick is worth the hype (short answer: depends on your lips).
One opinion she won’t soften: cheap lipstick isn’t always worse lipstick. Some drugstore formulas outperform products that cost three times as much. That take shows up a lot on this site.
How We Pick What to Cover
Nothing gets reviewed here without Andreea wearing it first. A full day, normal activities, the stuff that makes a “12-hour formula” fall apart by hour three: coffee, lunch, talking, the usual.
The Disclosure Part
If a post includes a paid partnership or an affiliate link, it’s disclosed, plainly, not buried where nobody scrolls. And if a product doesn’t work, the post says so, even when the brand sent it for free.
Does that mean every review is glowing? No. Some products just don’t hold up, and pretending otherwise helps nobody.
What You’ll Find Here
- Product reviews: tested lipsticks, not guesses based on marketing copy
- Application techniques: from a classic red lip to the parts nobody explains well
- Shade guides: sorted by undertone and skin tone, checked against how they actually photograph, not just how they look in the tube
- Trend coverage: the useful kind, not “10 colors everyone’s wearing” filler
About the Name
Worth addressing head-on, since anyone searching “Lipstick Queen” will run into the cosmetics brand Poppy King launched in 2006. That brand changed ownership years ago, and its original products are long discontinued.
This site has no connection to that company, to Poppy King, or to anyone who has held the Lipstick Queen name since. Same words, completely separate thing. If you’re looking for the original lipstick line, this isn’t it, and better to say so upfront than let someone land here confused.
Get in Touch
Questions, corrections, or a product that deserves a second look: contact@lipstickqueen.com. Andreea reads everything, including the message pointing out a typo in a five-year-old post.