Why Taylor Swift’s “red lip classic thing that you like” almost never happened

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Red lipstick has been a part of Taylor Swift‘s look for years now — she even sang about it in her song “Style.” But it turns out getting Taylor to wear red lipstick in the first place was a huge deal that was almost nixed by both her management…and her mom.

Makeup artist Gucci Westman recently told the Australian edition of ELLE magazine that she’s the one who first put red on the Red singer. “I remember I was the first one to give her a red lip. It was for an Allure cover.”

Specifically, it was a March 2009 cover that ran right before Taylor kicked off her Fearless tour. 

“She’d never worn a red lip,” Westman continued. “When the red lip happened, I had to get permission [from] her mom.”  In addition, Westman says she was told by Taylor’s management that “Taylor doesn’t do red,” to which she replied, “Well, Taylor needs to try red.”

Westman says she can’t remember exactly which shade of lipstick she used back then, but Taylor loved it so much that Westman gave her a tube of it. She suggests that if you want to replicate it, you should mix Brick and Tomato from the “Les Rouges” palette of her brand Lip Suede.

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