ELLE Exclusive: This Isn’t A Lip Balm, Babe. It’s Fire And Ice

It was only a matter of time before someone put hot sauce in a balm.

Not literally — though you’d be forgiven for thinking so after one swipe. Hot Sauce DLT, the latest launch from indē wild, is a tinted lip treatment that tingles, flushes, hydrates, and dares. It’s not glossy. It’s not safe. It doesn’t just sit pretty in your pouch. It performs, it provokes, and it simmers.

Founder Diipa Büller-Khosla knows what a “cult-favourite lip balm” sounds like. She’s heard it all. “The world had seen every kind of lip balm,” she says. “People were craving something fun and functional.” Her response? A balm that plays with capsicum and menthol, while still sitting on the base of vegan ghee, peptides and squalane. You get the softness, sure. But first, you feel the spice. “It’s 99% care and 1% fire-and-ice volume,” Khosla adds. “You feel it. You see it. But it’s still doing the work.”

The plumper myth? Consider it broken.

Most plumping products come with a warning label and a little pain kink. Not this one. Khosla and her formulation team were clear: Hot Sauce needed to deliver the flush without the dread. “We used chilli and capsicum to bring the heat, and menthol to cool it down,” she explains. “The early samples were honestly too hot to handle. But that’s how we landed on the balance — it had to feel like your lips, but hotter.”

Unlike most gloss-coated exaggerations, this balm actually builds over time. The peptides work in the background while the tingle plays up front. No pain. No burn. Just a sensorial flirtation with real benefits underneath.

This isn’t a red lip. This is a red flag — the good kind.

For Khosla, the product isn’t just about payoff. It’s about identity. “I’m that girl who carries hot sauce in her bag,” she says. “As a Punjabi living abroad, spice was non-negotiable. It was a little piece of home I could take anywhere.”

The heat, in that sense, is personal. The flush is cultural. And the balm, despite being dressed like a trend piece, is actually layered in nostalgia and comfort — the kind you don’t have to over-explain but still want to reclaim.

Lipstick feminism is tired. Lip-care agency is next.

If this feels like a beauty drop with a point of view, that’s because it is. Khosla is quick to shut down the idea that the product is only about plump lips. “Plumpers have always been kind of extreme — like pain is the price you pay,” she says. “That's the myth we wanted to destroy. You can bring the heat and be kind to your skin.”

Even the old beauty-politics debates feel stale now. “I don’t love the term ‘lipstick feminism’, but I get what it tried to reclaim,” she adds. “I still walk into meetings in full glam and watch the tough questions go to the men on my team — even when I’m the best person to answer them. And I always do.”

Today, for her, it’s not about wearing less or more — it’s about deciding who you are on your own terms. “It doesn’t have to be makeup anymore. It could be hair, skin, wellness, or even doing less. That choice is power.”

So what does Hot Sauce DLT actually feel like?

Like a dare. Like a comeback. Like a secret. Like your lips… just with a little attitude.

And no — it doesn’t scream. It simmers. “Beauty isn’t pain, babe,” Khosla says. “Bring the heat. Keep the care. And feel hot doing it.”