Eyeshadow primer

Eyeshadow primer is a base for the eyelid alone. It is a thin cream or fluid, clear or tinted to the skin, that dries to a slightly tacky film: powder laid over it grips instead of sliding, pale shades look like their pans rather than taking on the colour of the lid, and many primers are sold as controlling the oil that makes shadow slip. The problem it answers is creasing, which one maker’s patent of 1984 defined as “gaps in surface coating” on the lid — the lines that appear by afternoon where the fold of the eye opens and closes all day.^[1]

A primer is not a cream eye base. A primer is meant to disappear, or at most to even the tone of the lid; a cream eye base is coloured, and is worn to deepen the shadow above it or on its own as a wash of colour. Nor is it concealer, though some primers borrow concealer’s job and cover veins and redness on the lid. What they share is a place in the order of things: on clean skin, before any colour.

Primers come in three kinds. Clear or translucent primers dry invisible and change nothing but wear; they suit a lid that is already even. Skin-toned primers carry a little pigment, in one universal shade or a short range, to even out redness and the darker skin near the inner corner, so that a pale shadow reads true. Correcting primers go further, in shades meant to cancel discolouration, and some sit close to concealer.

Choose by what goes on top. Under light, pastel or neutral shadow on a lid with visible veins or dark patches, a tinted primer makes the colour look like the pan. Under deep, saturated colour, a clear one is enough. Oily lids need the most grip: look for primers sold as long-wear, waterproof or oil-controlling, and let them dry fully. Dry or crêpey lids do better with a creamy, flexible primer used sparingly, since a thick layer of any base settles into fine lines. For glitter or loose pigment, a tackier primer holds more.

Use very little — a bead-sized dot is enough for both eyes — and warm it on a fingertip. Tap it from the lash line up to the crease, and on to the brow bone if shadow will go there; smooth it into a thin, even film with no ridge at the edge, and take it close to the lashes, where liner and shadow meet. Then wait until it has set. Shadow pressed onto a primer that is still wet goes on patchy and grabs.

A light dusting of translucent or skin-toned powder over the set primer takes the edge off the tack and makes blending easier. Pat powder shadow on first rather than sweeping it, then blend. Take it off with the rest of the eye make-up, gently and without rubbing, and clean the doe-foot or brush if you use one.

Most complaints about primer come from three habits. The first is using too much: a thick layer never sets properly, so shadow slides on it and gathers in the fold — the opposite of the point. If shadow still creases by afternoon, try half as much. The second is not waiting: shadow laid on a wet film grabs in patches and then lifts. The third is asking a primer to hold something it cannot. A soft, oily cream shadow will still move on a hot day, whatever lies under it, and a primer made for powder will not stop a glitter from falling.

Hooded lids need the primer carried up past the crease to where the skin folds, since that is where colour transfers first. And judge a new primer fairly: wear it for a full day with one eye primed and the other bare, and look at both in the evening.

A product for the lid alone, laid down before shadow, is older than the word primer. In 1969 Estée Lauder launched a Ready-To-Wear Eye Makeup Collection whose two looks both began with an Eyelid Foundation, patted in around the eye and sold as protecting the skin, evening out its colour and keeping “the makeup on”.^[2] The complaint it answered lasted. In 1984 the American company Plough filed a patent for eyeshadow sticks that would not crease for eight hours, because earlier sticks “tend to show creasing during normal wear after a short time”.^[3]

The primer in a tube of its own is easier to date than to credit. Urban Decay’s website did not list one in February 2004.^[4] That November its product page offered Eyeshadow Primer Potion, a “nude-colored miracle cream” in a genie bottle, to be applied in a thin coat and left to dry before shadow, and promised “absolutely no creasing”.^[5] In August 2007 Too Faced applied to register Shadow Insurance as a trademark for an “eye shadow primer”.^[6] Primers are now sold at every price, from the drugstore to the prestige counter. The idea is the one Estée Lauder sold in 1969 — a thin film between the skin and the colour — in a tube of its own.