Lengthening mascara

A lengthening mascara works on the ends of the lashes. Its brush is slim, with short, evenly spaced bristles or teeth that behave more like a comb than a mop, and its formula goes on thinly enough to be drawn out to the finest part of each hair. The lashes taper to almost nothing at their tips, which are often paler than the roots; coating them is what makes a lash look longer, more than anything added to it.

Against a volumising mascara, it trades mass for separation, so the lashes read as a fan of distinct lines rather than a thick fringe. Some formulas go further and add length outright, either with fine fibres that reach past the natural tip or with polymer films that set into a sleeve round each lash. Those two technologies, and the choice between them, are most of what distinguishes one lengthening mascara from another.

Fibre mascaras carry short lengths of nylon or rayon that catch in the wet coat and extend beyond the tip.^[1] They give the most visible length, and the most fallout: loose fibres can land in the eye, the drawback noted of fibre mascaras from the first.^[2] If your eyes are sensitive or you wear contact lenses, try a fibre-free formula first.

Tubing mascaras use flexible film formers that set into a sleeve round each lash rather than painting it. Their makers sell them as smudge-proof on oily lids and in humid weather, and as removable with warm water and gentle pressure, the sleeves sliding off in pieces rather than dissolving. They separate well and add little thickness. A plain lengthening formula, with neither, relies on its brush; it is the easiest of the three to build up and to take off.

Curl first, if you curl: a lengthening mascara sets whatever shape it is given. Start at the very base of the lashes, where the brush can catch every hair, and comb straight through to the tips in one slow stroke, turning the brush as you go so the bristles, not the core, do the work. Then go back for the ends alone. A light second pass over the outer half of the lashes adds length without weight.

The tip of the brush does the detail. Held upright, it reaches the short lashes in the inner corner and combs the lower lashes one at a time. Build any second coat before the first has set, since a coat laid over dried mascara drags and clumps, and with a fibre formula keep to two coats at most: more fibres mean more to fall. Look down into a mirror rather than straight ahead while you work, so the lid is out of the way and the brush can reach the roots.

Choose the shade with the tips in mind, since that is where length shows. Black gives the strongest contrast against the skin and suits most lashes. On very fair lashes, or beside fair brows, brown-black or brown reaches the ends without looking drawn on, and a navy or plum lengthens more quietly still. Whatever the colour, a lengthening mascara that stops short of the tips has not done its job.

The formula decides the method. A washable plain or fibre mascara comes off with an ordinary cleanser or micellar water held against the closed eye for a few seconds. A waterproof one needs an oil or two-phase remover. A tubing mascara wants none of these: warm water and light pressure from a fingertip or a flannel loosen the sleeves, which then slide off the lashes whole. Whatever the kind, do not scrub, and never pull at lashes stiff with mascara. A lash that breaks is simply shorter, which is the opposite of the point.

Longer lashes were promised long before anything could supply them. An early nineteenth-century guide to the toilette told its readers to clip, or "tip", the ends of their lashes every month or six weeks to make them grow, and lash "growers" of petroleum jelly and lanolin were sold well into the twentieth century. A treatise on hair of 1926 was blunt about them: each lash grows to a set length and falls out, and grease only makes the hairs stand more erect, giving an illusion of length. In the United States the Wheeler-Lea Act and the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act of 1938 let the authorities charge such claims as false, and the growers disappeared there.^[3]

What actually lengthened the look of a lash was separation. In 1891 the actress Blanche Pierson told a correspondent that her lashes needed only an extremely fine comb and a stick of black cosmetique: rub the comb on the stick and pass it through the lashes.^[4] The comb returned in the wand era, in applicators such as Max Factor's LashMaker of 1975.^[5]

Fibres took the idea further. Helena Rubinstein's Long Lash Mascara and Revlon's Fabulash, both of 1963, are the earliest fibre mascaras the historian James Bennett has found; the fibres reached beyond the natural ends of the lashes, and a formula published in 1975 carried rayon fibres at five parts in a hundred.^[5] Nylon and rayon are still the fibres most used for length.^[6] The two methods have not changed: carry the colour to the end of the lash, or add something past it.