There are times when you want glamour. Just “take over the red carpet” show-stopping amazing. Few deliver full-on gorgeous like Giorgio Armani’s Lip Maestro in Dark Velvet ($32 #201). We didn’t love the red cap, but as we know it’s what is inside that counts.

Like the other products in the Armani Maestro line, the Lip Maestro’s are a complete reformulation that one doesn’t find in other makeup lines. This is a deep, velvet texture with very intense color. It dries down to a matte texture with a very soft sheen (“velvet” describes it well). I’m not certain how Giorgio Armani packed so much pigment into such a slight bit of product, but one has to really work a bit to apply this color lightly. Here’s a full application on Liz:

This is one of those incredible, once-in-a-lifetime swoony colors that packs a gorgeous punch. Here is Liz wearing the color with Giorgio Armani’s Eyes to Kill Shimmer in Mirage:

We tried the alternative of patting Giorgio Armani Dark Velvet on very lightly, to get just a touch of a stain:

Unsurprisingly, we found that Giorgio Armani Dark Velvet was out of stock at several locations. I can see this becoming a cult color.  Here are swatches of Giorgio Armani Lip Maestro Dark Velvet, Chanel Rouge Allure Luminous Intense Rouge Noir, Chanel Rouge Coco Rivoli and Guerlain Vega:

Armani Maestro Dark Velvet is even deeper than Chanel Rouge Noir, which of course is a very dark, dramatic vampy color. One doesn’t need many colors like Armani Dark Velvet, however there simply aren’t many colors like it, so that works out perfectly.