I made a midlife attempt at the Gen-Z peel-off lip craze (2025)

If you asked me for my recommendations for a sophisticated, midlife-appropriate lip colour, you wouldn’t expect a product that looks like gloopy black tar to be high on the list. And particularly not one that’s gone viral thanks to a TikTok from ubercool but, let’s face it, slightly scary Gen Z pop star Billie Eilish.

However, the beauty world is full of surprises and I’m always happy to approach even the wackiest ideas with an open mind and be proven wrong. (How else would I have known that makeup inspired by a pink-cheeked baby hippo could be so flattering, for instance?) So, it was with a mix of curiosity, scepticism and excitement that I reached for the much-hyped Sacheu Stay-N Lip Liner stain, which is new in at Boots and promises the ultimate, bullet-proof nude colour.

This product came to prominence in a video that Billie posted of her backstage makeup routine, which has so far racked up a staggering 113m views. (I tried not to be a nitpicky old person over her punctuation-free caption: “leave me alone i barely know what im doing but heres what works for me & what i do before every show on tour”) Sigh.

Anyway. The lip stain is the star of this backstage show, thanks to its extremely unconventional application method. The aforementioned tar-like gloop is designed to be slicked on liberally, then left for at least 10 minutes to ‘set’ before being peeled off to reveal the final result. While this may sound like an incredibly annoying and time-consuming way to paint your lips, the promised pay-off is a budge-proof nude colour that feels comfortable and lasts all day and night – so even the sweatiest, most raucous of events holds no fear. (Gig for Billie; local mums’ book club for me.)

Billie herself applies it only as a lip liner, which is actually the way it’s designed to be used. (The clue is in the name: Stay-N Lip Liner). Now, in case it’s passed you by, there’s currently a yoof-driven craze for wearing lip liner that’s far darker than the rest of your lip shade. No doubt this ‘ombre lip’ trend is supercool in the eyes of teetotal Gen Z but to me, it’s simply smacks of the wineglass-eroded look I get naturally, two hours into a night of necking Chardonnay.

Billie also wears her liner outside her natural lip line, which looks poutsy and cute on a 23-year-old but when you’re my age it just suggests you forgot to put your readers on before applying your makeup.

Not ideal. But with a few tweaks, could this product be adapted for the midlife woman? After all, I do like the idea of a lipstick that’s genuinely life-proof, but that doesn’t leave lips dried out and puckered up like a monkey’s bum.

So, rather than going with the Gen Z liner method, I decided to apply the product all over my lips apart from the wet inner section, for fear it would accidentally transfer on to my teeth. It’s a stain after all, and I’m already overdue a top-up of my whitening kit. I also opted for P-inked shade, which, despite going on black, seemed to offer a softer, more wearable final tone than Billie’s more brown-y Noohde. I was never able to pull off that 90s supermodel thing back in the day, let alone now.

Despite the very thick consistency, I found it reasonably easy to paint on a passably accurate shape. The initial look on my lips, however, was ridiculous – imagine a menopausal Morticia Addams – so I decided it was best to spend the developing time hidden away in my bedroom.

Alas, I was interrupted halfway through by my 14-year-old daughter (she has a radar for such things) who burst in and wasted no time in a) identifying the product (“Oooh, the Billie Eilish stuff! HAND IT OVER) and b) telling me I had applied it all wrong. (“Mum, you are a complete idiot,” was, I think, the phrase.) I would have come back with a sharp retort of my own but unfortunately the product started to crack the instant I moved my lips. Damn.

Once my heckler had been shooed away, the bedroom locked and I felt confident that my lip stain had ‘cooked’, it was time for the grand peel and reveal. I gently prised away a corner and, lo, the whole upper lip shape came away in one neat piece. Very, very satisfying indeed.

Even more gratifying was the result underneath. The grim gothy lip had been replaced by a very pretty pinky-nude shade, which looked even better with a slick of lipgloss on top. Rather than looking like makeup, my lips just looked naturally rosy; the sort of youthful shade that drains away with age and some women spend thousands getting tattooed back on. For 12 quid, you can’t grumble.

And, while I won’t go as far as to claim that Sacheu Stay-N Lip Liner can rival semi-permanent makeup, it did last me all day, all night and was still going strong the next morning.

It wasn’t remotely drying either, unlike most regular long-wear liquid shades I’ve tried, and I didn’t have to suffer the annoyance of the colour going grainy or patchy as it wore off.

All in all, it was a surprising triumph for this midlife beauty director. In the (almost) words of Billie’s most famous song: not bad, guy!