Lipstick Royalty

If you have not been formally introduced to Lipstick Royalty Magazine, let me get you acquainted with this little gem.

Lipstick Royalty started in 2007 as a fun idea amongst a few good friends. Now this gorgeous, student-run publication has grown into a full-blown, fashion-forward webzine, featuring beautiful, full-color photography and incredibly unique content.



I had a little chat with Editor-in-Chief Rachel Phipps. See what she had to say about her lovely little brainchild:

How did Lipstick Royalty Magazine come to be what it is today? A little background please :)
Well lets see... December 2007, one Saturday night my friends were watching a horror movie in my room. I hate horror movies, so I was doing my very best not to listen and to stay in my own little world. I was as bored as hell. I started a fashion blog. I thought to myself, "Hey, wouldn't it be cool to have different writers for the blog like a real magazine?" Somehow we launched our second Feb. issue as a full magazine layout off of our MySpace page. Inside Out Magazine was born. Writers came and went, and we changed the name to Lipstick Royalty with a shiny shiny re-launch. We decided to launch LR as a .PDF, and the next milestone in the story is our first, August .PDF issue - out August 1st!

What can we expect to see in this next issue?
Lets see... Catwalk reviews, designer interviews, killer photography c/o Hocus Focus LA, a very pink haired cover girl (the lovely Amor Hilton), behind the scenes at a runway show (can you spell drama?), advice on becoming a fearless female, couture cakes, the many funkadelic ramblings from the founder of mookychick.co.uk, and our Fashion Editor's advice column. (And a lot of other stuff, but you'll just have to read it to see!)

Who is Lipstick Royalty? Tell us a little about your readers.
Anyone and everyone. The people who read the magazine are so diverse... students, office workers, bands on tour... we get such a shock at the really mental range of people who write in to us!

If LR was a girl, what would be her signature style? And what song would she be listening to right now?
Song... people are so diverse who read LR it's hard so say... Wait... actually the song I'm listening to right now would be perfect! - Good Girls Go Bad by Cobra Starship ft. Leighton Meester. Cobra Starship are just ridiculously silly and cool (just like the song!) and Leighton Meester's new album sounds like club pop beats so far, so she brings another dimension to the song. Also, she's Blair Waldorf on Gossip Girl, so that takes care of all of our high-end readers!

Lipstick Royalty girl's signature style? I've been thinking about this one a lot recently as one of our new columns, Diamond Duchess, is based on the Lipstick Royalty girl. The answer simply is: she does not have a signature style - Diamond is the every girls' girl!

What do you do in the hours away from working on LR? Tell us about yourself!
Well, one of the biggies is school. I've still got two years left before university and juggling the magazine with class and homework is ALWAYS mission impossible! But I somehow manage. I also blog a lot, about lots of really random things. And, I'm in the middle of doing an online internship at an online magazine, as well as writing articles for other websites, too.

Also I'm a fashion photographer, so I spend a lot of time planning shoots, coming up with concepts and working with loads of different models and make-up artists! I'm also a published author and I'm working on my first novel... but I don't talk about that because it's not going well!

Favorite artist/designer you've featured in the magazine? Give us a good one!
These are loads... oh this is hard... Can I give a few? Well, there's the New York design house New York Couture, who we got our first ever cover off of. I still email Cassie the designer sometimes and stay in contact - she was brilliant! She's dressing Katy Perry now.

Really hard to narrow it down now! OK, one no one has seen yet, which is Doe Deere of Lime Crime Make Up. I love her make-up (she sent me samples!) and I've always worshipped her blog, but last night I got the answers to her interview back and it's one of the funniest ones we'll ever put in the magazine! My final favorite is for the December issue, which is an interview with Kelsey from the band Kelsey and the Chaos! - they're playing the Van's Warped Tour at the moment and they just got signed. The interview looks great and it was a personal favorite for me, as they're one of my favorite bands!

How can we become Lipstick Royalty?
Well you can start by reading the magazine! You can also add us as a friend on MySpace, or follow us on Twitter. You can also subscribe for extra LR top secret perks using the box on the front page of our Web site!

Thanks Rachel!

View the brand new August issue here! I love it!

Lipstick Royalty Magazine www.lipstickroyalty.com

Rachel's blog: www.wastemylifepretending.onsugar.com