Lipstick lust; The season's ladylike lips are polished and perfect, yet natural and not at all fussy.

Byline: Sarah Brown

Sometime in the last decade, a significant shift-makeup-wise- occurred: Without even realizing it, we became a lipgloss nation. Women in sharply tailored suits, hipsters in vintage bohemian frocks, and teenagers in tank tops all gave up the bullet and went for the wand-sticky gloss in clear, rainbow-bright shades, sometimes scented (sometimes flavored) like watermelon or bubblegum.

This fall, lipstick-a brand-new, brilliantly overhauled, appropriately glamorous, yet appealingly user-friendly version of itself-is back. After all, a season of elegantly restrained, ladylike clothes certainly demands similarly grown-up-if minimal-maquillage.

But this is not your mother's-and certainly not your grandmother's-makeup: Call it un-

lipstick. The new formulas (seen in fleshy shades of peony and barely there pink at fall shows like Balenciaga, Chloe, Ca-

rolina Herrera, and Proenza Schouler) are designed to deliver sheer veils of color and to moisturize lips. They have staying power, but you hardly know they're there. They don't look painstakingly painted on, but they do look polished. They're not superglossy, but they're not powdery or dry, either. They're sort of . . . perfect.

"You might look at a color and think, I could never wear that, but they're sheer," says Los Angeles makeup ...