Volumising mascara

A volumising mascara is judged by one thing: how much thicker the lashes look afterwards. Two parts of the product do that work. The brush is full and dense, with many bristles packed round its core, so that each pass picks up a generous load. The formula is built to leave a thick film, with waxes whose main job is to add bulk to the coat on each hair.^[1]

Its nearest neighbour is the lengthening mascara, and the difference is one of emphasis rather than kind. A lengthening mascara uses a slimmer, comb-like brush and a lighter coat to separate the lashes and carry colour to their tips; a volumising one accepts a little less separation in exchange for mass. Many tubes claim both, and most sit somewhere between the two, so look at the brush before the label. One formulating chemist thinks the wand probably decides more about a mascara's performance than anything else, since most formulas on the market are technically very similar.^[1]

Start with the bristles. Brushes with more of them pick up more mascara and lay it on thickly; brushes with fewer are better at separating the lashes.^[2] A fat brush of soft, twisted-wire bristles gives the most volume and the greatest risk of clumps. A moulded brush, with short, stiff, evenly spaced teeth, tends to deposit less but combs as it goes.

The formula matters as much. Heavier mascaras are made to dry slowly, taking seven to ten seconds or more according to one brush maker's patent, so that a thick coat can be laid on and then combed through before it sets.^[3] That open time is what lets you build a second coat. It is also why a volumising mascara smudges if you blink against the brow bone too soon: give it a few seconds with the eyes looking down before you look up.

Mascaras divide, roughly, into water-resistant and waterproof. The water-resistant kind, sold as washable, is usually a water-based emulsion: it lays a film that lasts the day and comes off with soap and warm water. Waterproof mascaras are generally made without water, on volatile solvents, which is why they survive tears, sweat and rain. It is also why they are harder to remove and more likely to irritate the eyes.^[4] They dry slowly, smudge until the film has set, and need an oil-based cleanser to come off.^[5]

For most days on most eyes, washable is the better default, and the easier one to layer into real volume. Keep a waterproof tube for weddings, swimming and heat. Take it off with an oil or two-phase remover held against the closed eye for a few seconds, then wiped downward: a thick waterproof coat pulls at the lashes if it is scrubbed.

Wipe the brush on the neck of the tube so the first stroke is not the heaviest. Press it into the base of the upper lashes and wiggle it from side to side for a second before drawing it out to the tips. The zigzag loads the roots, where thickness shows, rather than the ends. Build the second coat while the first is still wet: once it has dried, a fresh layer drags on it and clumps.

If lashes stick together, comb them apart with a clean spoolie before they set. Use the tip of the brush, held upright, for the inner corners and the lower lashes, where a full coat looks heavy. Close the tube firmly and do not pump the brush in and out, which pushes air in and dries the formula sooner. Manufacturers usually recommend discarding mascara two to four months after purchase.^[6]

Before there was a product for thick lashes there was a technique. Actresses and dancers beaded their lashes: they melted a cosmetic in a spoon or a small pan, lifted it on a stick and laid it on so that a bead hung at the tip of each lash, often sticking lashes together to make them more prominent. A magazine memoir of 1904, "Confessions of a Stage Struck Girl", describes a performer doing it over a gas jet, and theatrical houses sold beading make-up under their own names, among them Mehron's Beadex and Max Factor's Eye-Lash Beading. A beauty-culture textbook was still telling its readers in 1961 to leave beading to the theatre.^[7]

The everyday route to volume came with the wand. Helena Rubinstein's Mascara-Matic of 1957 drew a grooved metal rod through a wiper in the neck of its case, and the load it carried mattered: too little made application tedious, too much stuck the lashes together. Maybelline's Magic Mascara of 1958 is the first wand with a spiral wire brush that the historian James Bennett has found, and within a few years most had followed. Brushes then multiplied into straight, curved, spiral, tapered and spherical forms, moulded plastics made more engineered shapes possible, and formulas followed with hollow particles added to thicken the film.^[8] Maybelline was then the largest mascara maker in the United States, and its switch marked the beginning of the end for the older forms.^[9] It followed Magic Mascara with Ultra-Lash in 1963 and with Great Lash, a water-based mascara, in 1971.^[10]

What survives is the balance the Mascara-Matic's makers were already weighing. Every volumising mascara is a negotiation between how much it leaves on the lash and how well the lashes stay apart, and the brush in the tube is its maker's answer.