CES 2021: Custom mix your own lipstick with this gadget
Perso can make nearly any lipstick color, even one to match your clothes.
Yves Saint Laurent Rouge Sur Mesure Powered by Perso mixes nearly any lipstick color you could want.
My makeup drawer is stuffed with liquid lipsticks of all colors, but this one gadget could eliminate all of those tubes. The Yves Saint Laurent Rouge Sur Mesure Powered by Perso can mix lipstick shades together into nearly any custom color, eliminating the need to buy a new lipstick when you want to try a new shade.
L'Oreal (the brand that owns YSL's cosmetic line) showed off Perso at CES 2020, and at CES 2021 it becomes a real device that you can buy, starting this spring.
Perso costs $299 and is about the size of a venti coffee with a stylish makeup compact perched on top. Inside is space for three liquid lipstick cartridges that are deposited into the compact in precise amounts to create a custom lipstick color with the press of a button. You just swirl the colors together with the included brush and apply to your lips. The brush attaches to the side of Perso with a magnet and the compact lifts off so that you can take your lipstick with you for on-the-go touchups.
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You'll be able to buy packs of cartridges in shades of red, fuchsia, nude and orange, each with three cartridges per pack. With those four color families, you can make thousands of different shades.
To pick the colors you want, you use the YSL Rouge Sur Mesure app. There you can select from trending colors designed by L'Oreal and various lifestyle influencers. "You can also choose your hair color and your eye color, and [the app] will recommend you palettes of shades that, based on scientific color data, will most likely will match well to your features," says Guive Balooch, the global VP of L'Oreal Tech Incubator, which created Perso.
You can also snap a picture of your bag, shoes, nail polish, eyeshadow or almost anything else and create a lipstick color that matches it. And you can get even more granular by picking a specific shade from a color wheel.
The YSL Rouge Sur Mesure app lets you choose colors that will suit your skin tone, or pick a color to match your outfit.
When I previewed Perso in 2020, I was already impressed. But with the new YSL branding, the final version of the product is even more appealing. The entire device looks stylish, from the slick black base to the compact that looks like a quilted leather YSL handbag.
The $300 price tag might give you pause, but Perso is designed for people who love makeup and already drop hundreds of dollars a year on it. Those customers (myself included) are willing to spend that amount on custom experience like this that both eliminates the need for owning dozens of lipstick tubes and stops you from wasting money on a full-size lipstick in a color that doesn't look good on your face. Been there, done that.
The total cost includes Perso and three cartridges, and you'll be able to purchase additional cartridges for $100 for three. Given that a single lipstick from YSL typically costs around $40, that price is a pretty good deal. In the future, L'Oreal hopes to make Perso available for the company's less-expensive makeup lines, which could bring the overall costs down.
As for a makeup enthusiast like myself, I can't wait to get my hands on Perso now, and I hope that someday we get more color choices and less-expensive cartridges.