Makeup for thin eyebrows 2022 | The Strategist

In the summer of 1995, I was living in a seedy East Village neighborhood wearing Revlon’s Rum Raisin lipstick working for a financial magazine every day. I felt stuck in my career and just went through one of those breakups where you question every life decision. When TLC’s “Waterfalls” came out in July, I made it my anthem. i needed change And that night I decided to copy Kate Moss and pluck I pulled my full brow down to a pair of huggable tennis bracelets and smashed, “I know you’ll have your way or nothing, but I think you’re moving too fast.” Nothing could have been truer. In less than five minutes, my brunette eyebrows were half gone.

Cut to three decades later: Moss is middle-aged, like me, and that darn thin brow is desperately trying to make a comeback, eh brown lip liner and space buns. (Credit to the late makeup artist Kevyn Aucoin for plucking the brows of supermodels like Moss, Naomi Campbell, and Christy Turlington in the ’90s.) Bella Hadid, Fenty, and Jazzelle Zanaughtti meet this time euphoria Actress Alexa Demie is leading the charge; On TikTok, #thinbrows has over 60 million views (compared to 24.8 million for #thickbrows), there’s a filter that reduces your eyebrows to Sharpie scribbles, and Googling “skinny brows” returns over 400 million results . Doja Cat recently shaved off all her hair and eyebrows and is now drawing them gossamer with hand-drawn emojis. All of this causes me severe PTSD. The trendy slim arc goes past the “Y2K front wall”, but don’t be fooled. Hide your tweezers. FYI: I don’t even own tweezers anymore.

Some brow experts refuse to cater to clients who want to go ultra slim. “We’re going to define a brow, but we’re not going to compromise the natural fullness,” says Calvin Saldana of Salon Striiike in LA. Adds Pilar DeMann, makeup artist and brow specialist in Litchfield County, Connecticut, “I have a client who wants progressively thinner brows, and I say, ‘You need to go somewhere else.’ I really want to break up with her.” If you’re still determined to thin your brows, you know there are alternatives to plucking like it’s 1999 — or 1920. The thin brow actually harks back to the flappers who rebelled , by wearing dramatic makeup just to be cheeky. But it was silent film sirens like Josephine Baker, Gretat Garbo, and Anna May Wong who popularized the trend. On screen, they couldn’t speak, let alone scream, so they opted for overly delineated scrawled arcs to better express their emotions. In the 1930s, blinding platinum blonde actress Jean Harlow shaved her own eyebrows and pulled them back as McDonald’s black arches.

Today, the most merciful version of the starved bow is called the “precision brow” and requires no plucking. The refined silhouette follows the natural rise of your brow bone. I would compare it to wearing an elegant pencil skirt instead of a maxi dress. Instead of enlarging the entire arch with powder or pencil, accentuate the center of the brow to accentuate the arch. Instead of brushing the hair up for volume, straighten and shape it. “It’s all about styling. You can comb the hair in place or pinch it smaller instead of fluffing it up,” says Saldana. DeMann likes to gently draw the bottom line of the brows with powder and then tighten the hairs with setting spray.

With all the body positivity and death of skinny jeans, why the narrow forehead now? It’s an aesthetic defiance of the overgrown brows and microblading look we’ve seen in the past decade, just as the thin arches of the ’90s were a rebellion against the bushy Brooke Shields brows of the ’80s. What I love about the modern version is its accessibility. As someone with arches that get rockier with age, I can tell you that it’s impossible to cheat on Cara Delvinigne’s caterpillars without a damn brow transplant.

Luckily, even a subtle change pays off: “I’m always amazed at how much you can change your look just by changing the brows,” says makeup artist Rachel Goodwin, whose clients include Emma Stone, Cindy Crawford and Selma Blair. “And luckily, you can do it without completely damaging your brows.” Here are five products you can use to try the “Y2K brow” without plucking.

Minimize this width by concealing the top and bottom hair along the natural arch with a flesh-colored pencil. Goodwin loves this matte version with a precision tip that comes in a variety of skin tones because “You can easily draw on your hair to conceal it and create that streamlined brow.” She casts a thin layer of the matte pigment onto smaller hairs, that border the eyebrows. A stick concealer will also work, but avoid a creamy formula that causes hair to clump.

Define a sleek brow by outlining the center with a brow powder slightly darker than your hair color using an angled brush. “Using it wet gives you more punch,” says DeMann, who also created a setting spray to help hold the shape. Be sure to tame the hair first with a brush or your fingers and bring it to your temple. “Make it soft and circular, like a comma,” Goodwin adds, because a strong thin arc just makes you look angry.

“A little highlighter under the arch creates a shine that makes the brows look more defined,” says Saldana, who also dabs under the arch to widen the eyes. DeMann also blends in some highlighter from below the socket bone to the end of the brow to accentuate the entire silhouette.

If you’ve over-plucked in the ’90s and need to fill in sparse areas, this tinted mousse-like gel Saldana uses for his clients wears for hours and evenly distributes color. If that’s not a problem, you can pinch the hairs of fuller brows tighter after wetting them with this binding product. Instead of brushing the brow hairs vertically, sweep the spoolie across them horizontally to seal in an arched line.

At Marc Jacobs’ last runway show in fall 2022, every model, including the Hadid sisters, wore bleached eyebrows. It’s a way to shock your look – and your loved ones. However, by picking up the color, you can also draw on a slim brow with a pencil. Goodwin, who lightens brows on set for a futuristic editorial vibe, uses Just For Men’s comb color to restore color.

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