I Own an Embarrassing Number of Lip Products—I Keep Coming Back to This One

Welcome to Deep Reviews—your one-stop destination to discover the absolute best products and brands the beauty industry has to offer. The Who What Wear staffers you already know and trust will research, test, and review the market’s most sought-after and buzzed-about products to see which formulas (of the hundreds up for consideration) are worth your hard-earned money and attention. You can expect honest, uncensored feedback and no-BS recommendations our hard-to-please testers endorse without reservations.

The majority of our Deep Reviews will feature our editors’ honest, ultra-hot takes on entire product categories or multiple products from a particular beauty brand, but every so often, we’ll sprinkle in a special single-product format called Honestly, I Love It. As the name suggests, these reviews will hone in on one standout beauty formula our editors can’t shut up about. This time around, I’m highlighting EADEM’s Le Chouchou Lip Softening Balm ($24).

I’m nothing if not a collector of beauty products. In addition to my makeup-stocked medicine cabinet, I have an entire storage cart dedicated to my beloved beauty products. What can I say? I’m always searching for the newest buzzy product and scouring TikTok reviews. Some call it a shopping problem, but I call it market research. Let’s just say I’ve been “researching” for quite some time now (three years, but who’s counting?), and I’ve amassed a large number of lip products.

Each of my lip products serves a particular purpose and lives in a specific place. There’s the lip mask that lives on my nightstand and the lip liner and gloss that reside at the bottom of my purse. And finally, there are the lip oils, balms, and treatments that have a permanent residency in my medicine cabinet. But now that I’ve tried EADEM’s Le Chouchou Lip Softening Balm, some of my go-to lip products are getting an eviction notice.

My expectations were sky-high when I found out that EADEM was launching a lip product. I own every product the brand has launched since its inception, and nearly all of them get five-star reviews from me. (Impressive, right?) So of course, I couldn’t wait to be blown away by this lip treatment, and that’s exactly what happened when the metal applicator touched my lips.

If you look at the brand’s About section on the Sephora website, you’ll see this product described as “an exfoliating-to-moisturizing lip balm with AHA + Peptides to smooth ashy, flaky skin, reduce lip wrinkles, and lock in moisture with a glossy finish.” And while all of that is 100% true, I’d like to add the natural plumpness that it gave my lips. The consistency is much thicker than I expected, but that’s a good thing. Some of the lip oils and glosses that I own feel a bit too thin, but I don’t have to mix this balm with any other product to get extreme moisture or my desired shade.

Le Chouchou is available in five buildable shades that were created to suit all lip tones without masking dual-toned lips. As someone with dual-toned lips, I love that the brand kept us in mind during the formulation process. This product can be used in four ways: as a lip balm, an overnight lip treatment, lip prep, and a high-shine lip finisher. This explains why these silver tubes are scattered all around my apartment. While I fell in love with every single shade, Fig Sauce really captured my heart. (The shades are named after French street snacks, by the way.) Now that it’s summer, I’ve abandoned my typical brown liner and lip gloss for something a little simpler, and every time I wear Le Chouchou, I’m able to skip the lip liner and still get my desired look without all the steps.

I’ve been so impressed with how the product looks and feels on my lips that I almost forgot what makes this balm so good for my lips. Some of the key ingredients are hibiscus enzymes, moringa oil, and hexapeptide. Hibiscus enzymes, aka “nature’s Botox,” are responsible for easing cracked lips and softening those lip lines. Moringa oil gives the lips deep moisture without that greasy feeling. It also helps recover the skin barrier. If you want pillowy-soft lips, hexapeptide is the collagen-boosting peptide that keeps the lips smooth and supple. The benefits are truly endless.

EADEM has launched mostly skincare products in the past. What inspired this makeup launch?

Marie Kouadio Amouzame: At EADEM, our goal has always been to design products that enhance your natural beauty, not conceal it—it’s why our brand slogan is “bare skin confidence.” And though Le Chouchou is technically a new category, this product does just that! Inspired by the essence of French beauty, our vision was to develop a lip balm that enhances your natural lip color as it exfoliates and moisturizes. And just like the rest of our line, Le Chouchou is infused with top-tier skincare ingredients like AHAs, enzymes, African mongongo butter, and collagen-boosting peptides to treat your lips.

What makes this lip treatment different from the other lip balms or glosses on the market?

We all have countless lip products cluttering our makeup bags, and so we wanted Le Chouchou to be the one that does it all. We envisioned something that exfoliates like a lip peel, moisturizes like a lip mask, and adds shiny color like a lip gloss in just one swipe because reapplying multiple lip products throughout the day isn’t realistic. Plus, as someone with dual-toned lips, finding the perfect nude color that doesn’t require layers of lip pencil was a challenge. Through extensive testing and swatching on various skin tones, we created universally flattering nude shades that enhance dual-toned lips without masking them.

The Le Chouchou Lip Balm is a four-in-one lip product. Can you tell me a little bit about the different ways we can use it?

As a lip balm, simply apply it to dry, cracked lips or whenever you need a touch of moisture throughout the day. For an overnight lip treatment, apply it before bed to wake up with smooth, flake-free lips. To prep your lips for lipstick or liners, apply it for 10 minutes and then remove it with a washcloth. Additionally, you can use it as a high-shine lip finisher by applying it on bare lips or over lip color for a glossy, never-sticky sheen.

This product comes in five gorgeous shades. What inspired the shade range?

When developing the shades, we aimed to create the perfect nude colors that work on everyone and enhance dual-toned lips, each named after our favorite street food snacks. The shades include Butter Mochi, a clear hue; Bissap Glaze, a deep plum berry; Boba Bounce, a rich, soft brown; Fig Sauce, a milky, rosy brown; and Burnt Malai, a milky desert rose.

Which shade is your favorite?

[I] really can’t choose just one! You can find at least two or three shades in my bag at all times. They’re all [my] chouchou, which means “favorite” or “beloved” in French.

Can we expect more makeup launches from EADEM in the future?

[My] lips are sealed, but I can assure you we’re hard at work developing exciting new products to boost your “bare skin confidence.”

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