Читать книгу Pretty Iconic: A Personal Look at the Beauty Products that Changed the World - Sali Hughes - Страница 17

The age of the selfie has reintroduced so many old-fashioned beauty techniques that I’d quite happily have left in the history books with lead face powder and chastity belts, and yet I feel nothing but joy at the huge resurgence in popularity of false eyelashes. Falsies were invented in 1916 (later than one might perhaps imagine), on the set of the film Intolerance, for leading actress Seena Owen’s big close-up. The director wanted the lashes on Owen’s sad eyes to skim her cheeks, and so the film’s hairdresser threaded wig hair onto some gauze and glued it to her lashline. Reusable false lashes went into production – initially using real hair or animal fur – and became a key element in almost all iconic Hollywood beauty looks. Nowadays, lashes are synthetic and mainly come on strips, but there’s still something so brilliantly decadent and utterly mad about sticking fake hair onto eyelids with glue, something so satisfying about fluttering huge lashes more at home on Tweetie Pie. No one can be bothered every day, of course, but the occasional application of falsies is a wonderful thing when you know how – and it really is so much easier than you may fear.

First, the lashes must be cut to size (unless they’re half lashes – those designed to be worn on the outer corners only and often just the thing for a more natural look). Cutting is important because if a strip lash is even the tiniest bit too wide for your lids, then the end will hit the bridge of your nose and peel off at some point during the course of the night, and a droopy falsie is never a good look. Cut from the outside; it’s tempting to preserve maximum flutter and cut from the inside, but this will rob the fan-shape of its gradual incline, and look unnatural. Second, always, always allow the glue (preferably Duo) to become a little dry and tacky. Wet glue is too messy and makes the lash too mobile and prone to wandering maddeningly onto fingers during application. Third, apply a little black liner and black mascara to disguise any joins. That’s it.

There are hundreds of wonderful lashes on the market. I love MAC 20, Red Cherry Joan, We Are Faux Carey Red and a host of designs by Eylure, but the affordable drugstore brand Ardell makes my favourites of all – and not only because of their deliciously naff 1970s branding. Ardell’s selection of designs is vast and caters for all eye sizes and tastes: from spiky and Twiggy-like to sleepy noir-era Bacall, to sumptuous feline flutters à la Loren. They either come without glue (my preference) or with Duo (the best). The invisible bands mean they can be worn more convincingly by chemotherapy patients than many other lashes, and, on a similarly practical level, they come out of the packaging without tearing or warping, go on like a dream and the tapered shapes and soft materials ensure that, generally speaking, they look more Old Hollywood, less Spearmint Rhino.