The hunt for the perfect brown-red lipstick (shopping my stash)

Here's a fun post for Hump Day!

So, I alluded to my change of hair colour in my last post and how it's influenced my taste in other things - namely makeup! It's amazing (pretty logical really) how a new hair colour can get you out of a makeup rut.  Taking advantage of that brief window before the red tint fades from my lightened hair - as it inevitably does and is already - I'm suddenly all about wearing complimentary warmer shades of lipstick and that had me zeroing in on brown-red.

My knee-jerk reaction was to go out and buy a new tube of lippy (Great excuse right?) but I've done the sensible thing first - this time - and gone on a treasure hunt in my lipstick collection to see what I have in brown-red.  Brown-red...is that Pantone's Marsala?? Hmmm...  Before I let myself muse any more on that point, here are the three lipsticks I came up with...
  
L - R: 
MAC - Dubonnet, Natio - Flame, Revlon - Wine With Everything

• MAC Dubonnet was the first lipstick I specifically dove into my collection for, as this Amplified formula lipstick is almost the colour of dried blood.  It definitely leans more to red but has the hint of brown to give it the warmth I'm looking for. This lipstick is by far the deepest shade in this trio and with its rich pigment and slight sheen it makes for a strong statement lip.  My only issue with this lipstick is because it's so dramatic and not a matte it requires more care to ensure it doesn't end up everywhere but on my lips when drinking and eating!

• Natio Flame is a shade lighter and brighter than Dubonnet and sits more in the middle of red and brown so is the true brown-red.  This shade looks like terracotta on my lips and has more of a low maintenance semi-matte finish.  This is the newest of the three lipsticks, which I bought on an unsuspecting whim a few months ago and is my favourite of the bunch because it is exactly what I was looking for in terms of colour and finish for a daytime lipstick. Success!

• Revlon Wine With Everything is an old tube (as you can see by the outdated packaging above) but this colour is a Revlon classic and still available in their core range of Super Lustrous lipsticks. This leans more towards the cooler end of the red spectrum as a plummier red, so kind of misses the brown-red mark although it still flatters strawberry-blonde hair, and is an appropriately classic rediscovery for a winter lip.

The swatches (top to bottom in the same order as above):

Besides having obvious fun playing in my own little makeup pit, the end result of this exercise were the realisations that:

I actually do have the perfect brown-red lipstick in my collection;
I don't need to go lipstick shopping after all;
I've embraced Pantone's colour of the year....maybe???
My own stash is the first place to shop!

When did you last shop your own makeup collection?