Tag Archives: susan streitfeld

Female Perversions (1996)

Eve (Tilda Swinton) goes shopping for make-up at a NARS counter.

In the glass cabinet several bottles of liquid foundation and eye-shadow compacts can be seen.

In the screencap above the proportions are a bit tricky, so I can’t decide if the compacts contain single or duo eye-shadows. I remember single eye-shadows in the old rubberised packaging were really tiny, while the duo eye-shadow compact had the same size as the blush compacts. Probably these are duos.

Eve is fascinated by the lipstick worn by the sales assistant and she asks to try it on.

This film was released in 1996, two years after François Nars launched his lipstick in 12 shades at the beauty counter of Barneys New York. The darkest of these shades were Scarlet Empress and Shanghai Express, so it’s reasonable to assume the exact shade featured in the film is one of the two.

My knowledge as a former NARS-issist, though, makes me think of yet another dark shade of red – Fire Down Below. I haven’t found any information about the year in which it was first launched. If it happened between 1994 and 1996, this could be another option for the lipstick seen in the film.