paint it red; How Jerry Hall's cool attitude and sexy pout turned young Australian Poppy King into an international lipstick whiz.

Byline: Poppy King

I wanted to be Jerry Hall before I knew she existed-before I knew about Studio 54, before I knew of the Rolling Stones, before I knew what it meant to be blonde, and even before I became obsessed with red lipstick. I was eight years old, and I wanted to be an adult straightaway, now, this minute. My father died of cancer when I was young, and my older brother went away to school, so I was mostly alone with my mother, a knitwear designer who traveled to Europe several times a year. She would return from her trips to Paris and London with amazing trophies from that far-off world-Maud Frizon shoes, Sonia Rykiel sweaters, Biba lipsticks in their mysterious dark tubes, opaque and intense smelling, ready for me to play dress-up. These exotic objects transported me out of our apartment above a store in downtown Melbourne, away from the rattle of the tramcars rolling down the street, and right into the center of late-seventies glamour.

Although I was really more prim than precocious, I couldn't wait to wear heels, go to discos, have boyfriends, use makeup. A few years later, when flipping through one of my mother's Vogue magazines, I came across Jerry Hall and found out that she did all of these things. All legs and lips, she possessed two of the most coveted pouts in the world, hers and Mick Jagger's. And rather than hiding behind her man, Jerry stood fearless and alluring beside him, the way I felt a woman should be. There was an exuberance to her sexuality and a confidence in the way she faced the world; you felt she was in control of her destiny. Jerry looked strong and dressed strong-red bikini, red lipstick, red nail polish.

At my very conventional school I was a misfit: the only Jewish kid, pale and unathletic. When we were asked in grade three to sing our favorite song in music class, the other girls sang hymns like "Morning Has Broken." I chose "Touch Me, I Wanna Be Dirty," from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, a musical my mother loved and that we would dance to around the living room. Given these traits, it was perhaps not surprising that I was fascinated by the idea of transformation: from rags to ball dress, ugly duckling to swan, struggling Australian teenager to bold and beautiful Amazon. And I learned that lipstick was a means of doing this, a tool of instant transfiguring power that could make me feel like Jerry Hall even if I could never look like her. True, I had blonde hair, but it was the bushy rather than the flowing kind. I had legs, but not the type that can "make a grown man cry," as her boyfriend sang. Mine managed only to raise me to an unlofty five foot three. But what I did have was lips, and as long as I had lips I, too, could paint them red; and as long as I had red lips I, too, could enter a world of glamour. Intense red is said to quicken the heart rate and prompt the release of adrenaline into the bloodstream. That was the effect I wanted to have. The Jerry effect.

But by the time I was old enough to attempt my own version of Jerry Hall, I couldn't find the shade that would do it. Pink and muted colors were all the rage, and lip gloss, neither here nor there, that looked great on my sporty school friends but not on me. Heavy pigmented shades, the kind associated with a more ...