Darker Lips for Fall: {A Beginner's Guide}

I'm kinda digging this season's trend in lip color, (read: dark and sultry), which seems to resurface every year about this time. This year, the powers that be in Make-up Land have decided to steer us away from the taupes, beiges and browns of last fall and guide us toward more wines and cranberries.  I, for one, am kind of amped about this because beige-based lip colors don't work so well on my pasty skin.

The key is to find out first if you have blue/pink (cool undertones) or olive/yellow undertones (warm undertones.) Here are two nifty ways to figure out if you're cool or warm:

1. Roll up your sleeves and look at the veins on the underside of your wrist. If they look blue, you're cool. If they look more green, you're warm.

2. The necklace trick. Grab a thick silver necklace and a thick gold. Try each on and, in natural light, take a selfie. Put the pics side by side and see which necklace made your face light up a bit more. If you looked best in the silver, you're cool-toned; gold is warm-toned.

Now that you know whether you are cool or warm-toned, you can take a walk on the darker side. I've broken the following lip colors down according to what you might look best in, depending on your skin tone:

1) bareMinerals Marvelous Moxie Lipgloss in Daredevil  2) Smashbox Be Legendary Long Wear Lip Lacquer in Beet It   3) Simply Vamp Lip Cream by NYX Cosmetics in Bewitching  4) NYX Butter Gloss in Devil's Food Cake (deep plum)  5) Sephora Collection Rouge Cream Lipstick in Crush

1) Sephora Collection Rouge Infusion Lip Stain in No. 13 Plum Concentrate  2) Ulta Lip Butter in Dubai  3) Too Faced Melted Liquified Long Wear Lipstick in Blood Red  4) Korres Lip Butter in Wild Rose  5) Covergirl Queen Collection Lipstick in Fine Wine