The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - The Telegraph Magazine
Beauty brains/the manual
Lisa Armstrong
The better-brow guide; and is skincare in the genes?
How to up the brow ante – and knock off the years
The upside of lockdown is that I can now make myself look 10 – OK, maybe five – years younger in about 90 seconds. It’s all about the brows – and not in the way it was all about the brows before lockdown. Because back then it was also – according to beauty brands – about flawless skin, luxuriant hair, impeccable nails, lustrous lashes, etc, etc. But a minor spot, a less-thanstellar DIY mani or pedi, or a few grey hairs are neither here nor there when it comes to the pixelations of the average screen. Just focus on your brows and hairline. At this point, I’m managing the latter with everyother-day applications of Color Wow’s brush-in powder. I make no apology for mentioning this stuff regularly, because it’s so effective, with zero risk of anything going wrong, unlike permanent home dyes.
It’s also pretty good, in extremis, for accentuating your brows, although it wasn’t designed for that. Guerlain’s new Mad Eyes Brow Framer was. Strange name, but this is a nifty fibre brow gel with a tiny applicator comb, the better to coat each hair, and it conditions brows, too. A little goes a long way. Brow enhancers we have no shortage of. Plenty come on a bit too strong for my liking, or get cakey. But Guerlain’s doesn’t. Nor does Blink Brow Bar’s Brow Build. For extra (cheap) nourishment, swipe some castor oil over brows and lashes every night.
If you’re nervous, you can book a virtual appointment with brow supremo Sherrille Riley of Nails & Brows in Mayfair, and she’ll guide you through a DIY session (£32 for 15 minutes, nailsandbrows.me). During this time, Sherrille will assess your brows and inform you of the best ways to maintain (tidy) and enhance them naturally.
The real beauty revelation of lockdown is the Finishing Touch Flawless Brows – an amazing device the size and shape of a mascara that leaves your brows as sharply defined as the threader or waxer. It’s also painless – or it is for me. You can use it above your brows, or between on all those fuzzy bits. I now prefer this to tweezers, which often trap bits of my skin (saggy brow area – who knew that was coming when they were 20?). Warning: it’s so easy and pain-free you could get carried away and take off half your eyebrows.
So that’s two years off my real age. The rest? Using the middle two fingers of both hands to stroke upwards beneath each arch to give them a lift (with some face oil to provide glissage). OK, it doesn’t last much beyond the next conference call, although cumulatively, it improves muscle tone. Those angsting over missed Botox appointments, you know what to do.