Cream eyeshadow

Cream eyeshadow is colour in a soft base of oils, waxes and emollients, sold in a small pot and pressed onto the lid with a fingertip or a flat brush. It gives a fast wash of colour, more even from one layer than powder, with nothing loose to fall onto the cheek, and it suits satin, shimmer and metallic finishes better than a flat matte. Most modern creams are made to set: they stay workable for a minute or so, then dry to a film that holds in place.

It sits between two neighbours. A cream eye base is made to be worn under powder, to deepen its colour or make it last; a cream shadow is made to be worn on its own, though it can do the base’s job too. An eyeshadow stick is often much the same cream in a twist-up case: tidier to carry, with less control over how much goes on. Against pressed powder, a cream gives more intensity and less fallout, and asks for a quicker, lighter hand.

The main choice is between a cream that sets and one that stays soft. A setting cream, often sold as long-wear or waterproof, dries within a minute or two to a film that resists creasing and transfer; it has to be blended quickly and is hard to adjust once dry. A soft cream or balm stays movable, gives a glossier, more lived-in finish and is easier to blend, but on an oily lid it travels and gathers in the crease, which has been the complaint about cream shadow for as long as it has been sold.^[1]

So choose by lid as much as by colour. Oily and hooded lids, where the skin folds over the crease, need a setting formula; dry and mature lids are often more comfortable in a soft one, worn thinly. Shimmer and metallic creams hide texture less well than satins, so test them on the lid, not the hand.

Cream flatters light-catching finishes. Satin, shimmer and metallic creams read as polished skin; mattes exist, but a flat cream can look chalky over a dry lid. The easiest shades are those a little deeper than your skin, a taupe, bronze or champagne, which can be worn alone as a one-step wash. Deeper colours, plum, olive or navy, are best pressed along the lash line and softened upward, where their intensity reads as depth rather than a block of colour. On deep skin, a rich metallic usually gives more light than a pale shimmer, which can look grey.

Use a clean fingertip: its warmth softens the cream and presses the colour on evenly. Take very little, tap it onto the centre of the lid and pat outward towards the crease, keeping the layer thin, and blend the top edge before it sets. A second thin layer, once the first is dry, looks better than one thick one. A flat synthetic brush gives a neater edge along the lash line and keeps fingers out of the pot.

Cream also works under powder. A neutral cream topped with a powder of a similar shade makes the powder brighter and longer-lasting; a metallic cream with a little deeper powder at the outer corner gives depth without a hard line. To hold a soft cream in place, press a little translucent powder over it. That slows creasing; it does not stop it.^[2]

A pot is opened and touched every time it is used, which makes hygiene part of the choice. Wash your hands before dipping a finger in, or lift the cream out with a clean spatula or brush, and do not share it: that is the FDA’s advice for all eye cosmetics.^[3] Close the lid firmly after use, because a setting cream left open dries to a crust, and keep the pot out of hot cars and sunny windowsills: the agency advises against storing cosmetics above 85°F, about 29°C.^[3] Throw away a pot whose smell or texture has changed.

Cream, or something close to it, is the older form of commercial eye shadow. Before the Second World War the commonest eye shadow was a paste: a colourless base of petrolatum, mineral oil and lanolin stiffened with beeswax, tinted, milled, poured into small plastic or metal containers and flamed to give a smooth surface. It was smoothed on with the little finger and left a sheen. Its fault was one its makers never cured: it soon settled into the creases of the lid, which powdering over could delay but not stop. Emulsion creams, less greasy, were made too, but their water needed preservatives and evaporated, so they were usually packed in tubes.^[4]

The pot outlived pressed powder’s rise. Estée Lauder, who later said her first eye shadow came in a single shade, turquoise, was selling a creme eyeshadow in the 1950s;^[5] Elizabeth Arden offered its eye shadow as cream, cake or powder in 1966;^[6] and in 1972 Noxell’s Cover Girl line added Shiny Shadow, a cream eyeshadow in pots,^[7] the year Aziza sold Silken Creme Shadows.^[4] What has changed since is the promise. The creasing that powder could only delay is what makers of long-wear creams now claim to prevent.