Slowly but surely, the members of KATSEYE are positioning themselves as trendsetters in the beauty sphere. Not only has Manon helped popularize the straight eyebrow trend on TikTok, but now the group’s very own leader, Sophia Laforteza, has everyone searching high and low for her go-to lip combo — including ourselves.
Earlier this week, Sophia went on Weverse live to chat to EYEKONS for two hours and she took the chance to drop a beauty bombshell: Nobody has gotten her lippie right. When a fan asked her what her lip balm was, Sophia did not hesitate to reply: “Not what you think it is. I’ve been seen y’all talk about my lips [but] nobody’s got it right. Just saying.”
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Now, it’s honestly not an overstatement to say Sophia’s lip combo has a fandom of its own, so given the revelation that nobody has gotten it right, we did what every beauty aficionado worthy of the title would and combed through the archives to find what products Sophia has been spotted using. (Translation: the best we can do until she decides to ungatekeep the secret product.)
If you try to look up Sophia’s lip balm online, you’ll be greeted with multiple results pointing you to the Lucas’ Papaw Ointment — and they are not unfounded. Sophia has seemingly been spotted using the little red tube in between performances and during some Weverse lives with her fellow KATSEYE members. She was seen applying it towards the end of the Philippines live in September 2024.
However, in the new video, she claimed the one people thought was “the one” is not… so maybe she used Lucas’ Papaw Ointment momentarily after picking up in between travels, and her loyalties lie elsewhere now.
In an earlier live from August, Sophia does apply lip balm openly during the stream and her choice then was the viral Summer Fridays Lip Butter Balm for Hydration & Shine in Vanilla Beige. However, she does complain about how hard the product is not coming out during the video — maybe it was because she loved it so much she had used it all up? Or maybe the struggle with the application was the reason it didn’t become her go-to? Anyways, we know she gave it a go.
In an even earlier video from The Debut: Dream Academy days, Sophia shared an Olive Young haul from her trip to Seoul — a classic when in South Korea — and, in it, she shared that she was “obsessed” with the Amuse Dew Velvet lip tint and “wore it all the time.”
