The morphe soulmatte velvet lip mousse is an air-whipped matte that arrived in 2023 with a velvet-lips push, from a brand that started out selling brushes. Here are four of its shades beside other soft-focus lip colors, liners and one very good duo.
The Morphe Soulmatte Velvet Lip Mousse Meets the Rest of the Soft Matte Crowd
Morphe started as a brush company. Siblings Chris and Linda Tawil founded it in Los Angeles in 2008, selling professional-grade makeup brushes at trade shows, and it later grew through influencer collaborations. Its parent company, Forma Brands, filed for Chapter 11 in January 2023 and was bought by its lenders that spring, so the Morphe you see now is a rebuilt one, and this mousse is a good way to judge it. In 2023 the brand launched the morphe soulmatte velvet lip mousse with a push for a look it called velvet lips, an air-whipped mousse that dries down to a soft diffusion of color with vitamin E in it. It comes in ten shades. Bella is a burnt cranberry, Whipped a muted mauve, Wifey a cool-toned nude and Honey a beige nude. Apply it straight from the doe-foot applicator for full velvet pigment, or dab it on with a fingertip for a smudged, just-kissed effect. The brand says it resists settling into lip lines.
Liquid lips with a blur
A matte liquid lipstick used to mean a dry, tight lip. The second grid shows how far that has moved. Violette_FR was founded in 2021 by the French makeup artist Violette Serrat, and Plume Lip was chapter one of her Plume franchise, a feather-matte whip with a blurred, medium coverage finish. Anastasia Beverly Hills built its name on brows, and its Lip Velvet is a true-matte mousse in a deep red berry; the liquid lipstick line came about after the founder's daughter Claudia, the brand's president, took the makeup side. Benefit's Plushtint is a matte lip tint in rosewood, from the brand that began with Benetint, a rose-tinted stain. Freck Beauty's Makeout Club is a buildable soft-blur lipstick. Try any of these with a fingertip blur at the edges and skip the stiff lip brush.
Liner, duo and two soft creams
Grid three is where the mousse gets company. The Soulmatte Gel Lip Liner in Whipped is a morphe lip liner with sweet almond and tea seed oil, and the brand calls it ultra creamy and comfortable. The Lip Duo in Other Half puts that liner and the mousse together in a brown-brick nude. Patrick Ta launched his brand in 2019 as a working makeup artist, and the Silky Lip Crème in a neutral berry has a satin matte finish. Sephora Collection is the in-house line of a retailer founded in France in 1970, and Cloud Blurred Matte Lipstick in a warm rose gives a bitten-lip effect. What I would skip is lining outside your natural lip edge. A blurred mousse already looks larger, and an over-drawn line shows the moment it fades.
Match the liner to the mouth
I would begin with the duo if you are unsure, since the brand has already matched the liner to the shade. Then try a second mousse in a color one step darker than your own lip, and blur the center. Use the other brands here as a way to learn what texture you like: whipped, creamy, or tint. Once you know that, the rest of the lip drawer gets much easier to build. If you want to keep browsing, I also put together Morphe Lip Liner and the Lip Liners Makeup Artists Reach For and MAC Velvet Teddy Lipstick and the Matte Nudes Like It.
