Clinique Black Honey Almost Lipstick Review

Clinique Almost Lipstick in Black Honey costs $25 for 0.06 oz (1.9 g), price checked at Ulta on 26 August 2026. Buy it for a sheer berry wash you can apply in a car window without looking, on a nine-ingredient base with no fragrance in the INCI. Do not buy it expecting colour that survives lunch: Temptalia measured wear at three hours, and "Wears Off Easily" is the top con tag on Ulta's listing with 42 mentions.

Key points

• $25 for 0.06 oz (1.9 g) at Ulta and Sephora on 26 August 2026, roughly $417 an ounce. A 0.04 oz deluxe size circulates as a sample.
• The base formula is nine ingredients led by castor seed oil. No petrolatum, no glycerin, no shea butter, no fragrance, no SPF.
• 4.5 out of 5 from 3,361 Ulta reviews and 93% recommend, but the 103 one-star reviews cluster on one complaint: no visible colour.
• Three hours of wear, and nothing in the formula is built to make it stay.
• Carmine (CI 75470), an insect-derived red, appears in the may-contain list, so it is not vegan.

What is Clinique Almost Lipstick in Black Honey?

Black Honey dates to 1971 and now anchors a three-shade line with Pink Honey and Nude Honey, sold as a twist-up bullet rather than a wand gloss. It reads near-black in the tube and translucent plum on the mouth, because the pigment load is low and built from opposing tones. The may-contain list shows the trick: Blue 1 Lake (CI 42090), Yellow 5 Lake (CI 19140) and Red 7 Lake (CI 15850) sit alongside iron oxides (CI 77491, CI 77492, CI 77499), and the iron oxides are why the bullet looks darker than the finish. Clinique sells the shade as a universal berry; Temptalia reads the deposit as a muted medium plum with warm undertones.

The 2021 TikTok surge is why it is on your feed. Newsweek and Fox Business both reported it selling out at Sephora, Ulta and Clinique's own site. The line that seven sell every minute comes from Clinique, and nobody audits it.

Is Black Honey actually universally flattering?

It flatters almost everyone for an unglamorous reason. The tint is thin enough that your own lip pigment does most of the work, so the same bullet photographs soft plum on fair lips and deep wine on deeper ones. Nothing clashes because little is being deposited.

That logic breaks at the deep end of the range. On deeply pigmented lips the tint effectively vanishes and the product behaves as a clear gloss. Ulta's one- and two-star reviewers say so plainly, several putting the payoff at no better than chapstick, one warning against it for melanated skin. Universal is not the same as visible, and the marketing conflates them.

The shade family is fixed, too. There is one berry, buildable to perhaps two passes of depth. If plum is not your colour, this bullet has no other setting.

What are the key ingredients in Black Honey?

The base list is short enough to read in full: castor seed oil, glyceryl triacetyl ricinoleate, cetyl ricinoleate, candelilla wax, carnauba wax, polyethylene, tocopheryl acetate, pentaerythrityl tetra-di-t-butyl hydroxyhydrocinnamate and barium sulfate. The first three are castor derivatives doing the shine and holding pigment in suspension. The waxes give the bullet structure, polyethylene adds slip, tocopheryl acetate is vitamin E, the pentaerythrityl compound stops the oils turning rancid, and barium sulfate is an opacifying filler.

What is missing tells you more. No occlusive such as petrolatum or lanolin, no humectant such as glycerin or hyaluronic acid, no butters. Castor oil feels emollient on contact but does not seal water into the lip, which is the mechanical reason behind Ulta's "Drying" con tag and Reviewed's tester reporting lips left parched once it had worn away. Treat it as colour with a cushion, not as lip care.

None of the nine is a fragrance ingredient, a fair reason to pick it if flavour oils and menthol sting your lips. There is no sunscreen either. There is also no film-former or silicone resin, the class that anchors a long-wear lipstick, which is why it comes off on a cup.

How does Black Honey perform?

Temptalia graded the shade A-, scored longevity 7.5 out of 10 and measured wear at three hours. That is the number to plan around, and it is the complaint the crowd agrees on: on Ulta, "Wears Off Easily" carries 42 mentions against six for "Drying" and four for "Not True To Color". Reviewed's tester found the colour and the cushion both went early.

The credit it earns is in texture. Temptalia's tester noted that despite being sheer and emollient it did not pull into lip lines, which is the usual failure of balm-lipsticks. It will not fix flaking, though: with no humectant and no occlusive, nothing softens loose skin before the colour goes over it.

Reviewed named Glossier's Ultralip, Billie's Super Salve and Rare Beauty's With Gratitude Dewy Lip Balm as comparable sheer, glossy options, though at $22 the Glossier saves nothing.

How much does Clinique Black Honey cost?

$25 for 0.06 oz at Ulta as of 26 August 2026, the same $25 at Sephora. That is roughly $417 an ounce. It does discount: WWD covered a Sephora sale that took it 30% off to $17.50, so paying full price in November is a choice. The 0.04 oz deluxe sample Sephora carries is the cheapest way to test the shade first.

If the price is the sticking point and not the finish, the cheaper matches are real. Our Black Honey dupes guide rates e.l.f. Hydrating Core Lip Shine in Ecstatic at $8 as the closest texture match, CoverGirl Clean Fresh Tinted Lip Balm in Bliss You Berry at $7.99 as the closest colour and opacity match, and Nivea Blackberry Shine at $4.49 as the cheapest tint that lands in the right family.

Is Black Honey worth the price?

At 4.5 stars across 3,361 Ulta reviews, the odds you actively dislike this are low. Worth is the narrower question. You are paying $25 for a specific sheer berry, a fragrance-free base, and a bullet that will not embarrass you if you apply it badly.

You are not paying for longevity, because three hours is ordinary and the $8 alternatives fade on roughly the same schedule. Anyone buying it as a hydrating treatment is paying for something not in the formula. As a colour at a price you have accepted for 1.9 g, it holds up. Bought on the strength of the universally flattering line, it can leave you squinting at a mirror wondering where it went.

Pros and cons

Pros:

• Sheer enough to suit most complexions and forgiving to apply without a mirror
• No fragrance ingredients in the base, which suits reactive lips
• Does not sink into lip lines, per Temptalia's testing, which is unusual for this formula type
• Comfortable while it is on, and quick to reapply

Cons:

• Three hours of wear, and "Wears Off Easily" is Ulta's most-tagged con at 42 mentions
• Near-invisible on deeply pigmented lips, where it works as a gloss
• $25 for 0.06 oz is roughly $417 an ounce, against $4.49 to $8 alternatives
• No humectant, occlusive or SPF, so it is not lip care despite the balm-like feel
• Carmine in the may-contain list rules it out for vegan buyers

Who should buy Clinique Black Honey?

Buy it if you want lipstick that reads as your own mouth on a good day and you apply it on the move. It suits lips that react to flavoured or scented balms, and medium-toned lips, where the tint shows up for the least effort.

Who should skip it

Skip it if you need colour that survives a work day or a long dinner; three hours is three hours, and blotting does not change that. Skip it if your lips are naturally deep in tone and you want a visible shift, because the payoff will be shine and little else. Vegan buyers should skip it over the carmine, and anyone shopping for a repair balm should look elsewhere. If the shade is the appeal but $25 for 1.9 g is not, the sub-$10 matches get close enough that nobody notices across a table.