Curling mascara

A curling mascara has to do two things a plain mascara does not: push the lashes upward and keep them there. The first is the brush's job. Many curling brushes are bent into a crescent that follows the curve of the eyelid, so that one stroke meets more lashes at once and presses them up as it passes.^[1] The second is the formula's. Its film formers contract as they dry, and that shrinking film helps to lift the lash and hold it in place.^[2]

That sets it apart from its neighbours in a practical way. An eyelash curler bends the lash and a curling mascara sets the bend: used together, the curler shapes and the mascara keeps. A lengthening mascara can leave straight lashes looking longer but still pointing forward, and a heavy volumising coat can weigh a curl back down. Straight, heavy or downward-growing lashes are the ones that gain most from a curling formula.

Not every curling mascara has a curved brush, and not every curved brush curls. Some curling mascaras use a straight brush and rely on a quick-setting film to hold the lift; some curved brushes come on volumising mascaras that curl very little. Read the claim for the formula as well as the shape of the wand.

A curve also takes some learning. A brush bent to the eyelid has to be held the right way round, with the inside of the curve against the lashes. A patent filed in 1990 set out the difficulties plainly: some people used curved brushes upside down, a straight brush worked better in the corners of the eye, and a brush curved to fit the upper lid did not fit the lower one.^[3] Use the curve on the upper lashes, and turn the brush onto its tip for the corners and the lower lashes.

There is a third route between the two. Brushes with hooks or rubber teeth, rather than soft bristles, catch short lashes at the root and hold them up while the formula sets, which is why several of the curling mascaras here use one. They lay down less product per stroke, so build them in two light coats.

If you use a curler, curl first, on clean, dry lashes: clamp near the base for a few seconds, then again halfway along, so the lash bends in a soft arc rather than a sharp angle. Never curl over mascara. Lashes stuck to the curler's pad can be pulled out when it opens.

Then work quickly. Quick-setting curling formulas are made to go on in several light coats, each combed upward as it dries so that the film hardens round the lash in its lifted position.^[4] Hold the curve against the lash line, press the bristles into the roots for a second, and roll the brush upward and out to the tips. Two thin coats hold better than one thick one, whose weight pulls the lash back down.

Heat sets a curl faster, which is why heated lash curlers are sold and why some people warm an ordinary curler with a hairdryer. Test it on the back of the hand first: metal that feels only warm there can still burn the thin skin of the lid. Humidity works the other way, loosening a curl as the day goes on, and several of the curl-holding mascaras here, among them the Korean ones, are sold as waterproof or smudge-proof.

A waterproof curl has to come off, though. Hold an oil or two-phase remover against the closed eye until the film softens, then wipe downward; a lash set stiff in its curve is better softened than scrubbed. Replace the curler's rubber pad when it cracks or grooves, since a worn pad crimps the lash into an angle instead of a curve.

Curl began as a way of holding the brush. A beauty book of 1926 told readers to brush the lashes upward and outward from the roots, the upward movement inducing the curl and the outward keeping the lashes apart, and warned that it took skill and practice.^[5]

The eyelash curler came from Rochester, New York. The Stickel Company was founded there in 1923 to sell the Kurlash, a curler invented by Charles W. Stickel whose first patented form was nicknamed the bear trap, and a redesigned model followed within a year. It was advertised as curling without heat, though in 1926 the Hollywood make-up artist Perc Westmore wired one to batteries to warm it. The company's own routine, published in 1936, was to curl the upper lashes and then touch its stick mascara to their tips while they were still held in the curler. Once the patents had expired, after the Second World War, close copies followed.^[6]

Formulas caught up later. Cosmetic chemists had noticed that the water in cream mascaras could be absorbed by the lashes and occasionally make them curl,^[7] and among the later refinements of the wand mascara were polymers added to induce a curl.^[8] By 1990 a patent could describe the curved brush, a spiral brush bent in manufacture to the approximate curve of the eyelid, as one of the major changes in the evolution of mascara brushes.^[9] The shape of the brush and the chemistry of the film have taken on much of the curler's work since, though neither has retired it.