My Life, My Eyelashes

The Great Mascara Hunt is the brainchild of my pal Annie, who runs the great Blogdorf Goodman blog. If you just cannot get enough of this mascara business, see her blog for more.

---

There comes a time in every woman's life—well, not every woman, but the kind of woman who likes to paint her eyes like a harlot, and we are legion—when it occurs to her that mascaras are differentiated in quality, and this realization alters her life.

It begins, usually, with an initial disappointment in the old cheap standby. It could be any complaint, but let us, for the moment, list the standards, so you know what I'm talking about, or so you can nod and laugh if you are one of us. One of us. One of us.

The common mascara complaints:

1. It flakes, leaving a scatter of black matter raining across your cheek and perhaps into your eye
   
2. It smears, giving you Panda Eye
   
3. It's hard when dry, making your lashes stiff, crunchy
   
4. It takes forever to dry, increasing chances of smudging it
   
5. It clumps
   
6. It fails to lengthen
   
7. It fails to add thickness
   
8. It won't hold lashes in a curl
   
9. The brush is too big/small/gimmicky/awkward
   
10. It stings your eyes (especially applicable to contact wearers)
    
11. It will not come off without dragging some of your lashes with it
    
12. It comes off so easily that it's almost instantly gone
    

When you notice one or any combination of these in the mascara you've been stroking on your lashes, it occurs to you that there may be another mascara in the world that does not annoy you the way the one you're using does. It does not occur to you that it should be hard to find such a thing.

I began my journey with the usual beginner's stuff: Maybelline Great Lash. Unfairly elevated by beauty magazines to legendary status, Great Lash won fame for being, apparently, part of every makeup artist's emergency kit. I assume that the reason for this ubiquity is that 1) Great Lash is extremely cheap, and 2) when you need to break out some mascara for touchups at a show or shoot, you need it to be new so you don't go spreading pinkeye among models, and 3) as well as cheap and readily available, the tar is predictable. The problems with it, in my experience—and please remember it has been roughly twelve years since I've worn it—are nearly all of the above. The brush, either straight or curved, is awkward to hold. The formula seems to prefer to adhere to your cheek or eyelid, rather than your lash. It dries to a crisp, which flakes like a good biscuit. There's no thickening, no lengthening. Basically, this mascara sucks.

I then moved on to a few other mascaras of little note (a Cover Girl, a Revlon, who cares) before hitting the next big thing: the L'Oréal Voluminous.

Voluminous is a gateway mascara. Bridging the world of cheap drugstore mascara—where your choices, while many, are comfortably finite and the prices within the bounds of impulse-shopping reason—and the world of department store mascara. Department store mascara is a limitless universe. You had no idea there were so many variations upon the consistency, color, properties of the paste in the tube, so many formations of brush or comb, so many promises, so many doe-eyed dreams.

The reason Voluminous can dispatch you right out of the drugstore is that it is almost great. But it is not great. See, that's how they get you.

Sure, initially, hey, compared to Great Lash et al, this stuff is great! It thickens! It leaves lashes fairly soft and curled! Makes the ol' blinkers look yooooooooge!

You happily buy tube after tube of Voluminous, which costs a little more, perhaps, than your Great Lash, but is surely worth it. After a time, they update the packaging, no big deal. They add a few flavors of it—newer colors, variations on the brush, waterproof, all the signs of the company realizing it has a good thing happening and wanting to capitalize on it. And then you realize your Voluminous, come to think of it, is a little clumpy. Your lashes aren't that soft. Maybe it stings your eyes one day. Then you realize your Voluminous is shit.

Maybe you go back to the drugstore and try a new paradigm: these things that have a white wand and a black wand, where you put the white primer on your lashes, wait, then coat over with black. Gimmickry cannot save you. These suck and the fibers in the primer get into your eyes and make you feel, in the afternoon, that you are going blind with pain. Face it: You need to go to Barney's.

---

You find yourself in Barney's with your friend F, lollygagging around the cosmetics counters, waiting for some other friends to finish up with the NARS blush to your left. (The passion for blush is another problem entirely and more intuitive and painterly than the purely technological geekfest that is the search for the perfect mascara.)

You stop by the (now defunct?) Stephane Marais counter and examine, skeptically, their mascara comb. After refusing to fall for that gimmick, you turn to your companion and ask her, idly, "Hey, F, what's your favorite mascara?" forgetting for an instant that you are talking to a woman with a much more remunerative career than you, a woman carrying a bag that costs your month's rent, a woman who collects Hermès scarves. She is a modest woman, though, for all her luxury goods, so she has the decency to flash you an embarrassed smile as she leads you to Yves Saint Laurent.

Yves Saint Laurent, it turns out, manufactures a mascara called Faux Cils (false eyelashes, for those of you non-francophonic readers) that will run you almost $30. Yet if God has not given you ideal eyelashes, Yves is here to remedy the problem.

Let me now describe my own lashes. I am Asian, so they're black. Makeup artists tell me they're long. That may be true, but they are neither thick individually nor densely fringed. (Incidentally, I know a man with such densely fringed eyelashes that it looks like his eyelids are edged in brown carpet. Why is it always the men?) So I need volume. And that is what I get with Faux Cils: wonderfully thick, lush, long, soft eyelashes, separated and coated with a perfectly balanced, perfectly sized brush.

Tip from F: Every few days, take a paper towel and wipe down that brush. Volumizing mascaras tend toward thicker formulas, and if you want to avoid the clump, wipe the brush down.

The surprise of the century: my preferred color is Burgundy, not black. Why? It's subtle, because dark enough to be almost black, but it gives a warmth to the eye area that gothic black doesn't. It looks weirdly...natural. Even though no one has wine colored eyelashes.

---

But then there comes a point at which you realize that you can't wear burgundy colored mascara every day. You need a standard black in your repertoire.

Enter Dior Show.

Although, before I got to Dior Show, I had a run-in with Shu Uemura's Fiber Xtension Lengthening Mascara, which gave me not enough volume and made my eyes sting so horribly by day's end that I had to go into the office bathroom and wash all my eye makeup off. I swear, something about these products that advertise fibers. What is that crap? Asbestos?

Dior Show does it all. It doesn't cheat length for volume, doesn't cheat the ability to hold a curl for softness. No! You get it all! It curls, lengthens, thickens, separates, never goes crunchy, doesn't flake, makes your eyes enormous, and stays on all day. The brush is thick and luxurious and hits every lash without being so huge that it's embarrassing. What more do you want?

---

I'll tell you what you want. Ludicrous lashes. For this, you need to take a little trip to Shu Uemura in Soho and visit their Tokyo Lash Bar. Despite my disappointment with their mascara, I can't say I was disappointed with their false eyelashes. These people offer over 20 kinds of false eyelashes, from full paste-on fringes to half-lash accents, and all the way to individual little lashes for a subtle or controlled flair. I haven't yet used the storied Shu eyelash curler (I've got a Tweezerman pincher that does the trick) but I've heard it's one hell of a product. These people are a little eyelash-obsessed.


Here's what you do: you get a pack of these individual eyelashes. Make sure you ask the store guy to show you how to put them on, because otherwise you will be in a pickle when you get home. You need to maneuver these babies with a tweezer: you cannot get the control you need with your soft, shaky hands. Even with the tweezer, it is a little bit like that game Operation where you have to lift the guy's kidneys out with miniature tongs, under pressure, knowing at any minute you could screw up and look ridiculous. Do not rush to put these on mere minutes before your car comes to get you. Give yourself half an hour. Concentrate.

Three lashes on the outer corner, in a little row, starting from the outside and setting them next to each other, carefully, slipping the glue end into the line of your natural lashes.

Wait for glue to dry, press with eyelash curler, run mascara lightly over all.

Look in the mirror, cover the bases of your false lashes with some black liquid eyeliner if necessary.

You now have Bette Davis eyes. Go flutter them someplace worthy of you.

Tip: My friend L once told me to use my hairdryer to warm up my eyelash curler before curling. It works! Just be careful not to get it really hot or you'll crimp your lashes, not curl them, and scorch your eye while you're at it. Test temperature on hand first. If you brand yourself with a sizzle, wait till it cools to a non-sizzling temperature before applying it to your eye, OK? Because we here at BTiGB are not responsible for injuries you sustain following our hazardous beauty advice.