More than thirty shades of lipstick went onto one character's mouth in season three, by the makeup department head's own count. In season five there are none. Not a different lipstick, not a sheerer one — the tube is gone from the trolley entirely, and the mouth is drawn with sharpenable pencils instead.
That is the single change worth knowing if you are trying to work out why Emily's face looks harder-edged in Rome than it did in Paris. Everything else about her — the blush, the bare-ish eye, the lashes applied one at a time — has been consistent for years. The lip is what moved.
Who decides this, and what she said
Aurélie Payen has run the makeup department since season three, after two seasons as the lead's personal artist. The show has been Emmy-nominated for contemporary makeup, as Screen International reported when she walked through her on-set process, and in that piece she is unusually direct about where her attention goes: "I wanted to focus on her mouth from the beginning. I saw an inner strength in her."
Season five is where that focus turns into a rule. Writing up the new season's looks, The Zoe Report describes Payen abandoning lipstick and sculpting the lips exclusively with pencils, quoting her reasoning in one line: "It's more control, more definition, more shape, and it's really precise."
The season shifts depending on the scene — soft contoured nudes, deep burgundies, an eighties treatment with gloss pressed into the middle, one outright purple. What does not shift is the tool. The pencil named in that coverage is NARS's, which is where the shopping gets complicated.
The NARS pencil has two names, depending on where you live
The product is written up as the NARS Precision Lip Liner. That name is real, and it is not what NARS sells — not in America when we first checked on 23 August 2026, and, as of 3 September 2026, not in Europe either.
We checked the brand's own storefronts rather than a retailer, because retailers keep old names alive long after a brand retires them:
| Where | What NARS lists | Price | Shades |
|---|---|---|---|
| US site, 23 Aug 2026 | "Lip Liner" | $26.00, shown at $23.40 when we looked | 11 |
| European site, 23 Aug 2026 | "Precision Lip Liner" | €26.00 | 13 |
| European site, 3 Sep 2026 | "Lip Liner" — same product ID as the US | €28.00 | 11 |
On NARS's US product page the pencil is simply Lip Liner — eleven shades including Jungle Red, Immaculate Red, Babylon Pink and Night Bird, in stock, with the brand describing a "creamy, velvet matte pencil." The old US address for a product called Precision Lip Liner returns a 404, and the name does not appear anywhere in NARS's own US product sitemap, which is why we are not linking it.
Europe has now dropped the name too — and it happened while this page was live. On 23 August 2026 the European site still listed Precision Lip Liner at €26 in thirteen shades, with Lérins, Mariachi, Port Grimaud, Rouge Marocain, Holy Red, Le Lavandou and Vence available and six of the thirteen out of stock. On 3 September 2026 every one of those addresses returns 410 Gone — the code a shop sends when a page is deleted for good rather than moved. NARS's own search still displays three of them, Lérins, Port Grimaud and Holy Red at €26.00 cut 40% to €15.60, but each tile opens on a page that reads "Page Does Not Exist." In their place the European site now sells Lip Liner at €28.00 in eleven shades — the same eleven the US sells, under the same product ID, 999NAC0000309.
So: a French-shot show, a French makeup artist, and a pencil whose quoted name NARS has now retired on both sides of the Atlantic. Search that exact name and you will land on resale listings and on search tiles that go nowhere. Buy the pencil NARS actually sells you — it is called Lip Liner.
Season four's lip was a lipstick, and we can still name the shade
Before the pencils, there was a specific tube, and it is the most useful thing in this entire article because it is still in stock.
Speaking to Marie Claire, Payen explained her thinking about the mouth — "It's more French to have bold lips and no eye makeup than American" — and named the shade she chose: Makeup by Mario Ultra Suede Lipstick in Nicole, an intense burgundy brown.
That description is not a writer's paraphrase. Pull the product data from the brand's own store and the variant is labelled, word for word, Nicole (Intense Burgundy Brown). The Ultra Suede Lipstick is $28 across all twenty shades, nineteen of them in stock, Nicole among them.
There is a neat coincidence here for anyone who wants both eras of the lip from one brand: the matching Ultra Suede Sculpting Lip Pencil is $26 in twenty-two shades, four currently sold out. Two dollars separates the season four method from the season five method.
The step before the colour is the one people skip
Payen's lip routine starts with something that is not a lip product at all. Her instruction to Marie Claire: "First, I apply Yon-Ka Nutri-Contour Nourishing Eye Cream to the lips; it helps the product stay longer."
An eye cream. On the mouth. Yon-Ka's US store sells Nutri-Contour at $74, in stock — a genuinely absurd amount to spend on lip prep, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. What matters is the principle rather than the jar: a rich, occlusive cream worked in and blotted gives a pencil something to hold onto, which is exactly the problem sharpenable pencils have on dry lips.
The other French thing in her kit is a scrub. The season five coverage has her reaching for Le Rouge Français lip scrub, and the brand's own shop lists it as 601 Apollon at €32 — volcanic sand, salt and cranberry powder, sold from France. Their store quotes $34 if you switch the display to dollars, but the euro figure is the one the shop actually prices in — converted display prices on European stores drift, so treat €32 as the real number.
Prep, then pencil. That is the whole architecture, and it is the reverse of how most people build a bold lip at home — colour first, then panic about the edges.
The rest of the face has not changed, and it is cheaper than you think
Three things stay constant across seasons, and two of them cost very little.
Blush is non-negotiable. "Emily is a character that needs blush," Payen told Marie Claire, naming Westman Atelier's Baby Cheeks Blush Stick in two shades. Bichette is $48 in the full size only. Petal is $48 full size, or $26 in the Petite — so both shades together run $96 at full size, or $74 if you take Petal small, a saving of $22 for a colour you will use less of anyway.
Lashes are the bargain. Her advice is to place individual Ardell wispies one by one rather than applying a strip, which is a technique note disguised as a product mention. Ardell sells Faux Mink Wispies at $15.99 for four pairs — just under four dollars a pair — while a single pair of the original Wispies is $5.99. The multipack is the better buy, and if you are cutting a strip into segments anyway, four pairs is a season's worth.
The eye stays deliberately quiet against the mouth: black, brown and sometimes grey shadow from Dior's Backstage Eye Palette, per The Zoe Report's breakdown. Dior's US site blocks our price checks, so we are not quoting a figure we did not read ourselves.
What this actually teaches you about a dark lip
Here is the part worth stealing, and it is not a shopping list.
A lipstick fills a shape. A pencil makes one. When Payen says "more control, more definition, more shape," she is describing a mouth that is drawn — outline, then filled with the same pencil, then blotted — which holds its edge under lighting that would eat a cream finish. It is the same logic that makes Wednesday's lip work: a pencil worn as the whole lip rather than as an outline, softened deliberately rather than laid on flat. Two very different shows, one method.
The practical version, if you want the season five mouth without buying anything from this article:
- Prep and blot. Whatever rich cream you own, worked in and wiped back. Tacky, not slippery.
- Draw the outline first, following your own lip line rather than over-drawing. Structure is the point.
- Fill with the same pencil. No lipstick over the top. This is what separates the look from an ordinary bold lip.
- Press once with a tissue, then go over the centre again. You get depth in the middle and a clean edge.
- Add gloss only in the middle if you want the eighties version the season uses in one or two scenes.
Counted at US brand prices, the named lip routine runs $74 for the Yon-Ka, $26 for the NARS pencil and $28 for the Makeup by Mario lipstick — $128 for all three, or $125.40 with the pencil at its current discount. Nobody needs to spend that. The eye cream is a stand-in for any occlusive balm, and the entire technique survives a drugstore pencil.
What does not survive is skipping the structure. If you buy the burgundy and swipe it on, you get a nice colour and none of the effect — which is, more or less, what separates a costume from a face.
For the other side of this show, we have already been through the apartment and the office, where almost nothing on screen is actually buyable. Makeup is the exception in television: the products are real, purchasable, and usually named by the person who applied them — the same reason we could pin down Euphoria's exact lip and eye products, one of which has since vanished from the brand's site, and why Bridgerton's licensed collection was easy to check and now returns nothing.
FAQ
What lipstick does Emily wear in season five? None. The makeup department head dropped lipstick for the season and builds the lip entirely with pencils. The pencil named in coverage of the season is NARS's.
What is the NARS pencil called and what does it cost? On NARS's US site it is sold as Lip Liner, $26, in eleven shades. Europe sold it as Precision Lip Liner at €26 in thirteen shades when we checked on 23 August 2026; by 3 September 2026 those pages had gone (410 Gone) and the European site had switched to the same Lip Liner, €28.00, in the same eleven shades.
Can I still buy the season four lipstick? Yes. Makeup by Mario Ultra Suede Lipstick in Nicole, described by the brand as an intense burgundy brown, is $28 and in stock. It is the one shade named on the record for the character.
What blush is used? Westman Atelier Baby Cheeks Blush Stick in Bichette and Petal, or a Chanel lip-and-cheek balm. Bichette is $48; Petal comes in a $26 Petite as well as the $48 full size.
Why does the makeup artist put eye cream on the lips? Her stated reason is longevity — it helps the colour stay put. Any rich, occlusive cream does the same job; the specific $74 jar is not the point.
Is the eye makeup heavy in season five? No. It is smoky but restrained — black, brown and sometimes grey shadow — because the mouth is doing the work. The department head's view is that a bold lip with a quiet eye reads as French rather than American.
Do I need the exact products to get the look? No. The method matters more than the shade: prep, outline, fill with the same pencil, blot. A cheap sharpenable pencil in a deep berry or brown-red will get you most of the way.
How many shades did she use before this? More than thirty lipsticks across season three alone, by her own account — which is what makes the season five decision to use none of them a real change rather than a styling tweak.