Something about traveling for me invariably means losing lip balm. There was the time I was outside of Taos, New Mexico, stuck Yelping the nearest Walgreens. Another time I frantically searched the aisles of a tiny health food store in Ojai, California. And maybe most memorably, when I was 19 backpacking through Italy one summer, desperately looking for the nearest neon green pharmacy sign. It happens a lot; my collection of lip balms I haven’t lost yet basically serve as postcards from the places I’ve been. The one thing about a lip balm emergency, though, is that you usually can’t be picky—literally anything will do—which has led to a lot of so-so discoveries.
But when I was in Rome earlier this fall, again with insanely chapped lips, I found myself once more looking around another foreign pharmacy. And that’s when I saw Labello, the very same balm I fell in love with (and promptly ran out of) during my backpacking trip so many years before. It’s technically a German brand, but Italians love it. Rightly so, because it’s the cushiest balm on the planet. It’s both no-frills and wildly luxurious feeling. You know how your lips look and feel after a shower—all plumped up and ridiculously moisturized, basically peak hydration? That’s exactly what you get with this balm. The scent is a non-annoying blend of shea butter and almond oil, and it leaves this perfect blurred-out finish. I’m very into the retro packaging with its ‘80s skiing-in-the-Alps vibe. But most important is its staying power. It’s the perfect companion to lipstick, no matter how drying the formula. It does its job well. So this time around I picked up a couple tubes of the classic flavor and a tinted berry one.
I later came to learn the brand is actually a sister to the widely-available-in-the-US Nivea, but I still love my Labello. And, in an even better recent discovery I made, I can get it Amazon Primed to me by, like, tomorrow—who knows when I’ll be in Italy next.
Labello Lip Balm, $13 for a pack of 2, amazon.com
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