Want longer lashes? Thicker? Au naturel? Here’s everything you need to know about eye-opening beauty solutions.
Nothing looks quite so glamorous as the dramatic, cheek-sweeping long lashes made famous by all those Hollywood stars of the 1940s and 50s.
But don’t despair, because even if your lashes are short and stubby, there are plenty of ways to dramatise your eyes and make them really pop.
Falsies
Synthetic lashes can either be glued in a solid strip to your lash line – or these days, even attached with tiny magnets, if you’re super high tech – or added directly to your lashes in individual clusters. In many ways, going for the individual clusters is a better choice, since they’re less likely to fall out. Strips don’t mix well with tears and we’ve all seen the pics of celebs whose falsies migrate alarmingly after too much champagne or an Oscar speech. If you do have a lash malfunction, missing a few clusters will be less noticeable than a whole strip going AWOL!.
Lash Extensions
In this process, a trained technician glues individual extensions to your natural lashes to lengthen and plump them out. Extensions are usually made from mink (either real or a faux silk blend), nylon or polyester. Mink is obviously pricier, but it’s softer and appears more natural.
Growth Serum
The active ingredient in most serums is bimatoprost. This originally featured in a prescription drop that’s long been prescribed for glaucoma, but when eye doctors realised their patients all had significantly fuller, longer lashes, it was quickly repackaged with a fancy new name—Latisse. Most non-prescription alternatives (such as RevitaLash which can be purchased from Amazon) contain similar ingredients, with differing levels of concentration. As a general rule, the less expensive the growth serum, the less effective it’s likely to be.