I tried a $500 lipstick printer

Picture this: you’ve expertly applied your base makeup, deftly filled in your brows and primed your pout with a hydrating balm before it’s finally time for your lip colour. Instead of reaching for your usual bullet or liquid lippy, you pick up a portable lipstick printer. It sounds like a scene from a sci-fi movie, except this device actually exists today.

Enter the Rouge Sur Mesure, which made its debut in Singapore earlier this year, and is YSL Beauty's first foray into gadgets that harness a patented technology. Known as Perso, it allows the gadget to create and dispense thousands of shades (up to 4000) of the brand’s Velvet Cream Matte Finish lipstick from the comfort of your own home.

The handheld gadget was borne out of consumer demands for personalised and customised beauty offerings. “We knew consumers needed a higher level of personalisation with products – especially in the last several years,” says Guive Balooch, global vice president of L’Oreal Technology Incubator in an interview with L’Oreal Groupe. The fashion house also hopes to pave the way for inclusivity for all skin tones with the Rouge Sur Mesure.

“A huge challenge was inclusivity and ensuring the device could produce enough shades to meet the myriad skin tones and cultural preferences of consumers. We worked through these challenges and created a product and system that was truly inclusive with excellent performance,” he adds.

How it works

A culmination of five years of trial and error and extensive research, Balooch reveals that the AI-powered printer boasts “various technological feats” including a proprietary motor system housed at the top of the devices which “compresses the formula from the cartridges at the base of the machine in an upward motion to the dispensing tray above for a clean application.”

Elaborating on the technology, cosmetic chemist Kelly Dobos tells Her World, “We've come a long way in being able to measure colour with bulky but sophisticated instrumentation, and have now scaled that capability to use on our personal phones and translate the mathematical coordinates of colour into a recipe to create custom lip colours.”

This gadget is surprisingly easy to use. To get started, you’ll have to download the corresponding Rougesurmesure free app and sync your device. You will then be prompted to load up your colour cartridge trio (there are four colour “universes” to choose from: red, nude, orange and pink). To create a lip colour, you will need to purchase three different cartridges (e.g one colour “universe”) of different tones; a light, medium and dark. One “universe” generates 1000 shades from the same colour family. There is also a magnetic lipstick brush that you can attach to the back of your gadget and a detachable lipstick compact that you attach to the top of the printer.

Once you’re ready to create, you can opt from three different modes: shade palette, shade match and shade stylist. Shade palette involves the use of your phone’s front-facing camera. Like an Instagram filter, the setting features an interactive colour wheel that allows you to virtually try-on different shades before choosing your preferred hue.

Shade match allows you to take or upload a photo – it could be your go-to handbag or lip colour worn by a celebrity – and the colour recognition technology will create that exact shade. Like shade match, shade stylist requires you to take or upload a photo. You can “pin” two colour points (I chose the colour of my blush and skin) and the app will recommend a complementary lip shade. It takes less than a minute for the Rouge Sur Mesure to dispense your lip colour.

Once you’ve created a shade that you like, you can take the compact off the printer and take it with you when you’re on the go. You also have the option to save it to your lipstick library so you can always create a fresh new batch.

Should you buy it?

The feature that I was most keen to try was shade match. There was a photo of K-pop girl group IVE’s Jang Won-young that has been living rent free in my head and I really wanted to recreate her apricot-toned lip colour. Although I could not create the exact shade, the app recommended an alternative colour that was very close. The idea of being able to replicate discontinued or expired shades with this mode is also extremely exciting.

I also thoroughly enjoyed the shade stylist feature because it gave me a chance to experiment with lip colours that I wouldn’t necessarily gravitate towards.

One limitation is it only works with one colour family (“universe”) and finish (matte) at a time. If you’re using a nude colour “universe”, for example, you would have to switch them out with a pink colour “universe” to create a fuschia lipstick.

Since each cartridge costs an additional $45, owning all 12 cartridges would set you back over $500. Dobos explains that “there are still some challenges in creating custom colour cosmetics because there are a lot of nuances in the properties of the pigments themselves and regulations.”

“There is a limited list of colours that can be used in lip applications. These colours are not pure shades; they have what we call a colour bias. Examples include Red 7 Lake which is more blue and Red 6 Lake which is more yellow. So in a device this small you can only have a few colour concentrates which limits the total number of shades you can create,” she elaborates.

While I do not foresee giving up my regular bullet or liquid lipsticks anytime soon, the Rouge Sur Mesure will definitely be something I reach for if I’m looking for a specific lip shade that will pair well with my outfit or if I’m trying to recreate a hue that has expired or been discontinued.

YSL Beauty Rouge Sur Mesure costs $500 (cartridges are priced at $45 each) and is available at YSL Beauty boutiques in Ion Orchard and JEM.