All products are independently selected by our editors. If you buy something, we may earn an affiliate commission.
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 the group's very own leader, Sophia Laforteza, has had everyone searching high and low for her go-to lip combo for months now — so, of course, we had to ask her about it in our May/June 2025 cover story.
Before we get into the details, let's rewind a little bit. Back in January, 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 seeing y'all talk about my lips [but] nobody's got it right. Just saying.”
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 had 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.
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.
In her live, 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.
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 that 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.”
Now, the bad news is this product has been discontinued, but Amuse does sell a glowier Dew Tint and Dew Balm, which Sophia might have moved on to? (And even if she has not, I've tried both of them and can tell you they are great for a similar effect!)
Now, there is a reason why you are seeing Sophia with different products in her arsenal, and it is because, well, she does not have a go-to. “Being so for real, I don't have one specific lip gloss,” the star exclusively tells Teen Vogue in KATSEYE's May/June 2025 cover story. “I'm literally wearing Aquaphor right now.”
Though she enjoyed the guesswork fans are putting into figuring out her favorite lip products, the people who had a feeling that she had more than one lippie in her stash were right.
Read more about Sophia and KATSEYE’s personal style in their Teen Vogue cover story here.
