There are women who like their lipstick the same way they like their wine — red. For Detroit women, there is one red lipstick that embodies all the things women are powerful, sexy, and bold, and that’s The Lip Bar’s (TLB) Bawse Lady liquid matte lipstick.
“Everybody wears Bawse Lady, and it’s because it’s a power color,” says TLB CEO and founder Melissa Butler. “For me, everything is about confidence and nothing adds more confidence than that stroke of that red color on your lip that says ‘I’m about to take on the day, I can do this.’”
TLB is much bigger than its best-selling red lipstick. This year we’ve seen the brand collaborate with other heavy hitters like the Detroit-based Glam-Aholic Lifestyle for the D-Girl collection and the Atlanta-based vegan restaurant Slutty Vegan with a bold and sultry lipstick collab.
This holiday season TLB has tapped one of Detroit gospel’s favorite daughters to be the face of its holiday campaign. Grammy-nominated gospel singer Kierra Sheard-Kelly, daughter of the Clark Sisters member Karen Clark-Sheard, has been chosen to show off a few of her favorite TLB things for the new Divinely Feminine collection.
“As it relates to the name Divinely Feminine, I feel like women, especially Black women, are in this era of being like, ‘I don’t want to wear it all. I don't want to have to carry the weight of the world and I don't want to be heavy. I want to go through life with a bit more ease and with a bit more softness, I want to tap into my femininity,’” says Butler. “Thinking about who Kierra is as a person, she is divine, she is a goddess. She is someone who is true to herself and true to her spirituality and clear in her purpose, and I feel like that is what divinity is all about.”
When it came to choosing Sheard-Kelly for this latest collaborative effort, Butler says it was all a matter of timing. The two have been mutual fans of each other for years, and Sheard-Kelly would even send encouraging words or comment on new products the brand would release. It was a chance sighting at this summer’s Essence festival — divine intervention, perhaps? — that the two would stand tall in their desires to collaborate.
“This summer at Essence Festival, I saw her in a hallway. She was getting ready to go on stage and was getting prepped, I was just trying to find a bathroom,” says Butler. “Our eyes sort of locked and she was like ‘Melissa we need to collab, and figure something out,’ and I was like, ‘We do.’ It all came off of a by chance passing in the hallway at Essence festival, and a willingness for both of us to work together, because we see each other, we honor each other, and we appreciate each other.”
The Divinely Feminine collection retails for $55 and includes Bawse Lady liquid matte lipstick, Minimalist lip gloss, Straight line eyeliner, Exact Arch micro brow pencil, and Big Timer mascara, packed into a luscious red medium-sized cosmetic bag. The limited-edition kit is available for purchase at thelipbar.com or at TLB’s flagship store, located at 1435 Farmer St., Detroit.
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