A lipstick I discovered at a Chanel counter in Selfridges on the morning of my wedding day. Worn to every job interview since. And the thing that got me through cataract surgery recovery when I couldn't wear anything else. This is my story of a twenty-five year love.

There is a distinct vulnerability that comes with eye surgery.

When I underwent cataract surgery earlier this year, my immediate focus was understandably on healing. But as the initial days passed and I prepared to step back into my working routine — a calendar packed with in-person client meetings and many Microsoft Teams calls — It struck me that there would be a month where I would not be able to wear any eye make-up while my eye was healing from the surgery.

To some, this might sound trivial. But in a professional setting, our outward presentation is deeply intertwined with our internal armour. For me, preparing for the day isn’t just about reviewing my meeting notes — it is a ritual of readiness. Walking into a meeting room or opening a Teams call without a finished face felt like showing up to a presentation missing half my slides. I would lose my usual baseline of professional confidence.

The psychology of the power pout

Psychologists call this “enclothed cognition” — the idea that the rituals of what we wear and apply can trigger real psychological changes in how we think, feel and perform. Cosmetics function as a kind of mental switch, signalling to our brains that it is time to lead, speak and connect. Research into what’s known as the “Lipstick Effect” consistently shows that even a single piece of makeup can meaningfully boost a person’s sense of self-esteem during challenging times.

Unable to touch my eyes, I made a decision: I would let my lips be the focal point. One powerful element, doing the heavy lifting for my entire face.

At a time such as this, there is only one lipstick that has the magic to make me feel complete – Chanel Rouge Coco in Légende

A story that begins twenty-five years ago

This year, my husband and I are celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary. The story of this lipstick begins on that day.

Like many brides, I felt deeply uncomfortable with the idea of someone else doing my makeup on the most important morning of my life. Wanting to feel entirely like myself, I booked two bridal makeup lessons in August 2000 to design my own look.

My first stop was the department store House of Fraser, where they have a specialist make-up studio. This introduced me to a product that changed my beauty life: Kanebo’s 38°C mascara, now called Sensai 38°C, still as good as ever. As anyone with short, straight Asian lashes knows, mascaras are notoriously prone to smudging. The thermo-sensitive formula was absolute magic. I also left with a beautiful — if rather dazzling — bright pink eyeshadow.

Which immediately created a new problem. Try as I might, I couldn’t find a lipstick that balanced it. Something that worked with my skin tone without tipping into overdone.

So I went to my second lesson: the Chanel counter at Selfridges London.

I happened to get incredibly lucky. The makeup artist running my session was a man named Olivier — I remembered he mentioned he had just finished the runway shows, clearly talented, and seemed genuinely interested, asking me about what hair style, the gown, if I’d picked out a colour scheme for the wedding. He understood my skin immediately. For Asian skin tones with a cool, pinkish undertone like mine, finding a pink that doesn’t wash you out is a genuine exercise in frustration. Olivier took one look at me and handed me Légende — a fresh, luminous satin pink that tied everything together perfectly.

I was so spellbound that I had the biggest beauty haul of my life that afternoon. The eyeshadow, the blush, the concealer, and that lipstick.

That look became my wedding day. And Légende became mine.

The scarcity that isn’t really about lipstick

I want to tell you something about the kind of person I am.

I hate running out of things. Genuinely, deeply hate it. My house is too full — I know this. I keep more than I need of almost everything, and I’ve spent a long time understanding why.

My parents were children when they fled China in the 1950s and went to live in Taiwan. They lost almost everything. My mother once told me about the journey. Her mother — my grandmother — would tell her to collect the grains of rice from the ground around them as they travelled, adding each one to their small store so the family could eat. I still think about what they endured to give us what we have today.

That particular fear — of scarcity, of the things you rely on simply not being there anymore — is the kind that gets passed down through families without anyone quite meaning to pass it on. It lives in the body before it lives in the mind.

For me, it expresses itself in making sure I always have enough. Always.

With Légende, I have a system: I reorder when I reach around one third of the tube remaining. It never failed me. I always had it.

Until about two years ago, when I went to reorder and found it simply wasn’t there. Discontinued.

For the first time in twenty-five years, I had one tube left and nowhere to get another.

I’ll admit something else: I have worn Légende to every single job interview I’ve ever had. It grounds me. It makes me feel unshakable. The idea of facing stressful professional moments without it is unsettling in a way that feels disproportionate — until I understood that it wasn’t really about the lipstick at all.

What recovery taught me

So during my cataract surgery recovery — bare eyes, full professional calendar, one month of enforced simplicity — I decided something. I was going to wear my remaining Légende properly. Every day. Not carefully, not sparingly. Fully.

Because some things are not for saving.

Every morning before a major client meeting, I twisted up Légende and applied it. And something interesting happened. My recovery month taught me that beauty is more fluid than I’d understood. Standing tall in front of peers and clients doesn’t require a full face — sometimes it just requires one thing that connects you to your strongest self.

The physical act of twisting up that lipstick — the weight of the black and gold casing, the specific click of it — is a direct line to my wedding morning. To Olivier at the Selfridges counter. To the best day of my life. That memory might soften with time. The physical connection never does.

The ending I didn’t expect

A few weeks ago, on a quiet evening, I went looking online again. Half expecting nothing.

Chanel had rereleased Légende. Same shade. Same distinctive black and gold packaging. Exactly as it had been.

I can’t quite tell you how happy this made me. It felt disproportionate, and then I remembered — it was never really about the lipstick. It was about the thing the lipstick represents. Twenty-five years of showing up. Of feeling like myself. Of never running out.

I’ve ordered two.

A note on Légende for Asian skin tones

If you’re reading this with a cool or neutral undertone — and particularly if you have Asian colouring — I want to be specific about why this shade works when so many pinks don’t.

Most pinks marketed as “universally flattering” lean warm, which can make cooler skin tones look sallow or washed out. Légende sits in a rare middle ground: cool enough to complement a pinkish undertone, luminous enough to add warmth without adding yellow. Olivier was right twenty-five years ago. I’ve never found anything that comes as close.

If you’ve been looking for your pink — this might be it.

Chanel Rouge Coco in Légende is available now at chanel.com and at Chanel counters nationwide.

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If this resonated with you — a beloved product lost and found, a scent or shade that holds a memory — I’d love to hear your story in the comments. These are the conversations I started this blog to have.

And if you’d like to read about my full cataract surgery skincare journey — what I discovered, what changed permanently, and the products that got me through — that post is here: [link to cataract surgery article]