Makeup - Eyes

Midnight Cowboy Rides Again Eye Shadow

Glitter is a dear friend of ours, albeit one that we won’t be keeping around forever. In the meantime, we like to reach for this champagne shimmer with reflective particles of pale gold. We recommend a swipe of creamy highlighter on the eyelids as a base, followed by a dusting of this glimmer powder.

For the full-on Bardot:

Line the eyes with black creamy pencil liner starting a third from the inner corner and ending just beyond the outer corner. Set the liner with a densely pigmented black eyeshadow heavy on the shimmer (we like Nars Nightclubbing). Blend the edge of the black shadow into the shimmery base starting from the outer corners with increasingly fine brush strokes. The result? A sultry, smoky eye with a streak of rock’n’roll glam.

Nars Eye Shadow in Galapagos

There are brown shadows for days in the aisles of drugstores and clusters of Sephora product displays, but this selection from Nars has won our heart and a permanent place on our eyelids. Deep black coffee pigment is saturated with shimmering gold disco and punctuated with microscopic gold flecks (we won’t call it glitter). A little goes a long way here, and we love blending a dab over a base of smudged bronze eye pencil. Finish with black pencil liner set with a dark, dark brown, and you’re ready for a cameo in your next movie or a night taking the town.

Nars Eye Shadow in Cordura

We like our coffee black, our martinis strong, and our eye shadows deeply pigmented. Nars is a reliable staple for bold, blendable color, and Cordura is our favorite for a brown smoky eye. Brush a shimmery sheer eye shadow base over eyelids, then line the eyes with a brown eye pencil. Use a sponge tip aplicator to smudge the pencil up and away from the eye 1/4-1/2in and brush the lighter color (left side) over the smudged pencil, extending just beyond the edges. Finish with a line of black pencil on the outer half of each top eyelid, and trace over the line with the darker brown.

Clinique Quickliner™ For Eyes Intense

An intensely pigmented yet gentle eyeliner is hard to find. The worst of the bunch migrated at the slightest breeze and caused our eyes to water. Others were too dry and pulled at our eyelids with the friction of a suitcase dragged without any wheels. And just when we thought we’d tried them all we returned to the first makeup brand we ever purchased. The Clinique Quickliner Intense is everything you want in a liner – it’s lushly pigmented, long-lasting, and perfectly secured with a base of eyeshadow primer and a smudge of black shadow on top.

Dior Iconic Mascara

Trends come and go, and there are few beauty products that make us panic more than the thought of this mascara being discontinued. Some formulas curl, some lengthen, others thicken, and Iconic manages all of these without clumps. The one beauty product we consistently gift to our dearest, we’re optimistic that Dior will make this a keeper.