It’s interesting to look back and pay homage to women’s beauty as represented by eyebrow styles from around the world.

Just like clothing fashion, eyebrow fashion has a life of its own. In our time, we’ve witnessed trends from thin, high-arched pencil drawn eyebrows to the natural, thicker, unkempt eyebrow style, and back again. Your eyebrows are surprisingly important in determining your look. They are meant to complement the shape of your face, and when your eyebrow shape is off, you’re entire appeal could change. While eyebrow styles come and go, what really matters is what fits for you face.

Ancient Trends

image via missfairchildcharmschool

In ancient Egyptian history, eye make up was applied as a homage to the god Horus – God of vengeance, sky, protection, and war. Eye make up was applied in order to protect against evil spirits and disease. They were shaved or tweezed and replaced with a dark gray or black powder made from the lead-based mineral galena. Brows were clean, arched and thick. Think Cleopatra.

Ancient Greek eyebrows, from 800 BC to 146 BC, were a determinant of purity. Married women sported a natural look while single women used incense to darken their eyebrows. Uni-brows were also considered beautiful.

image via libby rosof

The uni-brow, which is for the most part a beauty offense today, holds a history of praise. The Byzantine empress Theodor is depicted in a 548 A.D. mosaic with a uni-brow. Ancient Romans also considered the uni-brow to be a desirable trait and a sign of intelligence, from 753 BC to 476 AD. During the Qajar dynasty in Iran, from 1785 to 1925, uni-brows were thought to be beautiful. And let’s not forget Frida Kahlo, whose uni-brow is recognizable even today.

In Japan’s royal court during the Heian period form 794 to 1185, eyebrows were drawn over white powdered skin to look like hazy clouds.

In the Middle Ages, from 1066 to 1485, eyebrow trends took a U-turn from ancient times and were dwindled down to the barely-there look. Thin eyebrows were desired as to draw more attention to the forehead.

1900s Trends

image via Kate Gabriel

In the 1920s, women were all about sporting pencil-thin eyebrows that were plucked to an extreme and then drawn over with a straight, slightly curved line. This was the era of flappers and beauty was a means to liberation. Going into the 1930s, eyebrows remained heavily tweezed but took on a more dramatic arch, as seen on Jean Harlow and Greta Garbo.

By the 1940s, eyebrow fashion tended toward the thicker, softer look but with a prominent arch. In the 1950s, a strong, meticulously-shaped eyebrow became vogue, as was seen on Elizabeth Taylor, Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn.

With the hippie movement in full swing in the 1970s, the natural eyebrow returned. Bushy eyebrows were all the rage in the 1980s with Madonna and Brooke Shields leading the trend.

The 1990s were less distinct in adherence to any particular trend, but tweezing or waxing was far more common and thinner eyebrows were again fashionable.

image via Hot Gossip Italia

Alas, today we are back to the bold brow, embracing thickness by filling in brows, but still keeping them clean and well shaped. Regardless if it’s in vogue or not, however, shape your brows to your desire as they fit your unique face.

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Top image: Juliana Cotinho 

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Here are my three easy tips to get professional eyebrow shaping on your own.

If the eyes are the windows to the soul, the eyebrows could be considered the “window treatments.” If the window treatments are too overpowering then you can’t see the view. On the other hand, if the windows are bare, the effect can be very stark. The eyebrow shape can either detract or compliment the eyes. Here’s how to create perfect eyebrow shapes in 3 easy professional eyebrow shaping steps.

Where to start with your brows? Before you turn over all control to someone else, take a good look in the mirror. Most often your natural shape is the most flattering. After all, the true job of the brows is to protect the eyes from things like sweat or rain running down our forehead. Your very own unique arched eyebrow shape (before you went crazy with the tweezers in 6^th grade) helps to funnel the moisture towards the sides of the face preventing it from going directly in the eyes.

The brows also form a visual boundary on the face literally “framing” the eyes. And like a great frame, the brows should bring attention to the eyes rather than detract. Subtlety is the key. To create the most complimentary shape for you face (and eyes), use your features as a guide.

Here are the basics of creating beautiful brows:

Step 1: Measure

Determine the parameters of the brows (use a white eye pencil to mark these measurements). Use a pencil or brush to create a line from the outer edge of the nostril to the inner corner of the eye and continuing up to the brow. This is where the brow should begin (mark here with the white pencil). Use the same technique to determine where the brow should end, this time the line goes from the outer edge of the nostril to the outer corner of the eye and continuing up to the brow (mark here with the white pencil). The arch should be just above the outer edge of the iris of the eye, when you are looking straight ahead (mark here with the white pencil).

Step 2: Remove hair

Once the parameters are determined, I use the same white pencil to connect the three points and create the shape of the brow. I use the line as a guide to determine what to keep and what to tweeze. I go by the adage “measure twice, tweeze once.”

I like tweezing over waxing because tweezing is more precise, and when I am creating a perfect brow each and every hair makes a difference. I tweeze one hair at a time in the direction the hair naturally grows, and I wipe my tweezers on a tissue so they are more efficient at grabbing individual hairs. Don’t try to get a bunch at a time (remember quality not quantity).

Having the right tools makes all the difference in the world. My favorite tweezers are made by a company named Tweezerman. I have been using Tweezerman slant tweezers for the last 22 years. (I have one pair that I have had that long!) These tweezers have a lifetime guarantee and the company has a free sharpening policy. Most definitely worth the price!

Once all the extra hairs have been removed I blend in my guide line (white pencil), which also camouflages any redness.

Step 3: Perfect

Lastly, I fill in any gaps using an angle brush and a powdered shadow that perfectly matches the color of the brows (if in doubt choose a lighter rather than a darker color). You don’t necessarily need to buy a special shadow for the brows, however stick to matte shadows only. Believe it or not I use Paula’s Choice “The Nude Mattes Eye” shadow Palette in my kit. The palette has a beautiful array of matte colors that match almost every eyebrow shade and the shadows really stay on (the brows or the eyes). To finish and keep the brows perfectly groomed apply a clear brow gel brushing up and out.

The perfect eyebrow shape take a little time in the beginning but once you create the most flattering frame for your eyes the maintenance is minimal, and you’ll be surprised at how little eye makeup is needed to finish the face.

Find Fatima on Twitter @fatimaolive and on Pinterest

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Images: hugo971 (top); fatima olive

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You might be full of energy and ready to get things done, but those droopy, poorly arched brows are telling the world you’re exhausted. Small as they are, our eyebrow shapes play a crucial function in emotional expression, and the wrong shape can not only throw off the balance of your face, but send an inaccurate message about how you’re feeling. Overly-arched brows can make you look harsh and angry, while rounded ones can lend a sad, bewildered look.

How you shape your eyebrows depends on what you’re working with. If you’ve got naturally lush, full brows, you’re in luck – a bit of trimming and tweezing is all you need to make the most of them. If your brows are sparse and shapeless, mastery of eyebrow-enhancing products can make all the difference in your appearance.

Tweezing Tips: Pluck a Perfect Shape

When it comes to plucking, less is more. It’s so easy to tweeze away what seems like just a few hairs and realize that you’ve fundamentally altered your eyebrow shapes. Plus – bold brows are in. The best course of action is to have a pro shape your brows the first time, and then keep them up at home, but if you’d rather tackle it yourself, here are some tips.

It’s best to pluck right after showering, after the warm water gets a chance to open the hair follicles, using a pair of tweezers with sharp, slanted tips. Before you take away any hairs, use a brow or mascara wand to brush the hairs up. If they’re overly long, carefully trim off the tips just past the natural line of your brow.

Start by assessing the overall shape of your brows. Do they have a noticeable arch? Use a pencil to find the most arched part of your brow and line it up with your eye. The most flattering location for the arch is at the outer edge of your iris, not over the tear duct or the middle. Arches over the front part of the brow create a shape that’s too round. Once you’ve located the arch, pluck just a few hairs along the bottom edge of the brow at this point to create a little bit of definition. The video above illustrates this process.

Note where your eyebrows start and end, as well. Plucking too far in from the bridge of the nose can make your eyes look too far apart, and if the ends of your brows are too long, they can drag down the shape of your eye, aging you and making you look tired.

Faking It: Enhance Eyebrows with Powder, Pencil or Wax

The most foolproof way to find a shape that’s right for your face without doing any permanent damage to your brows is to play around with some eyebrow stencils. Most likely, there will only be one or two that really work for your face shape, so you might use the pack just one or two times before you figure out what you like and how to do it on your own, but it can be a helpful tool to get started.

The biggest mistake women make with brow products is choosing a powder or pencil that’s too dark. Even if your hair is black, you likely don’t need anything darker than medium brown to achieve a soft, natural look. Your brow product doesn’t have to match your hair color exactly; the trick is finding a product that’s not either too ashy or too red for your skin tone and hair.

When filling in brows with a pencil, make sure it’s sharp and use a light hand to apply short, hair-like strokes in the direction that the hair grows naturally. The same technique is helpful when applying powders and waxes with a brush. If your brows tend to be unruly, hold them in place with a clear brow wax or mascara.

One kit that’ll give you lots of control is the vegan and cruelty-free Jane Iredale Bitty Brow Kit, which is available in blond and brunette shades and comes with pigmented brow powder, three brushes and botanical brow wax. Tarte’s Amazonian Clay Waterproof Brow Mousse is another great product to help achieve a natural look, and it lasts longer than most pencils.

Still feeling lost? Take a few minutes to browse some eyebrow tutorials on YouTube, so you can see how the products are applied.

Top photo: Nadia Martinez

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The post Eyebrow Shapes for Everyone: Frame Your Face appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnA behind-the-screen look at the consistently ridiculous inbox of a writer.

At EcoSalon, we receive our fair share of email pitches, and we’ve decided to give you a weekly peek at this valuable information inside our inboxes. These products, people, and services are 100 percent real, although we’re not always sure that they should be.

Enjoy Health Problems While Looking Like Cameron Diaz!

We got this recently from body sculpting lingerie brand, Leonisa: “As Latin America’s best-selling lingerie line, Leonisa knows every woman’s body type is different which is why they have a wide array of shapers for every shape and size.”

Leonisa can help your body type look its best by doing things like taking your pear shaped body that might look like Shakira, your hourglass curves that look just like Kim Kardashians, or of course your Cameron Diaz boyish/ruler shape, that needs extra added curves and create the body you always wanted! (Side note: It will suck in the process.)

What we want to know is what happens when you go home with your date and they peel off that sexy dress only to see this underneath?! Or, worse yet, ripples of love handles they never knew you had engulf their groping hands. We think this is very unhealthy on a number of levels.

Workout With Makeup On That Won’t Ever Come Off…Ever!

Tired of looking like a hot mess during your hot yoga and kickboxing workout? Don’t you know everyone is looking at you when you’re at the gym to make sure you look good? Everyone. Duh.

You better listen up sweetheart and get some makeup advice from the pros.

YouBeauty’s “Cosmetic Chemistry Expert” Ni’Kita Wilson says when shopping for cosmetics that can take the heat of a vigorous workout, “look for the most transfer-resistant makeup possible; it has a better chance of surviving your workout or physically demanding job.”

Uh oh, don’t they know who they’re pitching to? A site that promotes non-toxic and organic makeup and skin products?

“Silicone-based foundations are best suited to exercise conditions,” says makeup artist Kevin James Bennett, a cosmetics expert for the International Esthetics Advisory Board of Leslie Baumann, M.D., dermatologist and author of The Skin Type Solution. “The cosmetic silicone molecules are too large to penetrate or become lodged in pores and are naturally water resistant,” he says.

Right, foundation for workouts that only comes off with toxic makeup removers. Thanks Kevin, or is it Ni’Kita or is it one of the other three names on the pitch. We’re not sure who to blame for this disaster.

(Note to women working out all over the world: Go makeup free while exercising!)

Dr. Umar Wants to Give You a Thick Bush!

Thanks to Dr. Umar’s PR crew for notifying us of a popular spring trend: bushy brows.

(Psst…we recently wrote about it Dr. Umar).

Sure we get it, bushy brows are in, but what we didn’t know was many women have to resort to transplant surgery in order to achieve the look. Wait, isn’t this a trend though? Won’t transplant surgery give you these forever?

Dr. Umar’s PR people write us: “Eyebrow thickness might come in and out of style (think Brooke Shields’ desirable eighties brows versus pencil-thin nineties supermodels), but no matter what the brow trend of the moment may be, fuller eyebrows signal youth. Period.”

I thought fuller eyebrows signified feral children and woods people? Youth. Hmmm…

Did I write yet that the good doctor wants to transplant your other body hair just above your brow? Yes. It is true.

Bushes everywhere.

Image: Rick

The post Better Living Through Publicists: Bush is Back appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnWant to have an iconic summer look beachside? Follow these tips.

Sun-bleached blondes with beach tousled hair, smoldering black eyes and pouty nude lips captured a time in the ’60s when curvy women in bikinis lit up movie screens. Over the decades, Brigitte Bardot and Claudia Schiffer have been inspirational icons for this playfully seductive summer look – one that will never go out of style.
GUESS’s Spring 2011 campaign reignited the part of me that would love to go wild with a box of peroxide, a teasing comb and a kohl pencil. Like most things that inspire me, this is a pretty unrealistic look for anyone who wants to do more than sing songs with choreographed dance moves on the beach. The reality is that much black eyeliner would protect from sun glare, but would be a nightmare as soon as one drop of salty water hit.  If you plan to stay dry and want to have some fun with your makeup recreating yourself as a ’60s beach bombshell, here’s the how-to.

Black out

To start you’ll need a black eye pencil, black liquid eyeliner, black eyeshadow, a tube of black mascara, and an eye contour brush.

Green product suggestions:

Living Nature Eye Pencil in Midnight

Lavera Liquid Eyeliner (vegan)

Alima Pure Satin Matte Eyeliner (to be used as eyeshadow) in Black (vegan)

Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics Brush #004 (vegan)

Pro tip: Put foundation on after eyeshadow so you can easily clean off any powder that may have dropped onto your face.

1. Line the upper and lower lashes of your eye with the black eye pencil. This doesn’t need to be precise but it does need to be thick and dense.  You may have to go over it a couple of times to get the right intensity.

2. Take your eye contour brush and begin buffing the edges of the lines to diffuse them up into the crease for the upper lid.  For the lower lid, pull the liner with the brush down to about the place where the ends of your lower lashes touch. On most people that’s about ¼ of an inch.

Pro tip: Do not connect the inner corners of the eyes with black and leave the water line free of liner to give a more wide-eyed effect.

3. Use the brush and go more heavily into the crease of the upper lid with black eyeshadow using a windshield wiper motion using very rounded strokes. Leave a fair amount of space between the shadow and the brow bone. Everyone’s eyes are different, so for some it maybe 1/8 of an inch and for others almost 1/2. Concentrate the color on the outer edges of the eyes. Make sure that the edges aren’t pointy, rather soft and arching. Follow with just a touch of shadow underneath the eye following the rounded curve. Keep the application a bit lighter here.

4. Curl your lashes.  A lot.

5. Whip out that black liquid liner and make a thick line across the top lashes. Then paint on a thick, but slightly thinner line underneath.  If you are feeling very deft, make the lines a little bit thicker towards the outer corners of the eye as you go.  Remember not to connect the inner corners with liner because it will shut down the eye and make it look more punk rather than 60’s.

Pro tip: If you mess up your liner use a pointy cotton squab dampened with a touch of water to quickly “erase” your mistake.

6. Layer on the mascara. This look has nothing to do with restraint. If you need to use half a tube on both upper and lower lashes then do it! Clumpy and pointy work here.

A bold brow

Is anyone getting tired of hearing me say that bold brows are the way to go for pretty much every look? This look really needs it and it’s what is most modern. Naturally groomed and less manicured brows add a great frame to the eye and structure to the face. Need a quick tutorial on that, check out this video.

Don’t touch those freckles!

If you are blessed to have a freckly face or even a freckle-less face, don’t cover it with a pile of foundation.  Let your skin show through and only conceal the tiniest bits where necessary.  The key to this look is really keeping things raw, rough and textured.  Use a tinted moisturizer with SPF to help even skin tone, protect and allow the skin texture to still be seen.  Try Josie Maran Tinted Moisturizer SPF 30.

Light lips

To balance such a heavy eye, a very nude lip is the way to go.  There’s nothing overly skilled about this part.  Just slap on some lip color and you are set! Ecco Bella makes a great natural, vegan lip color called Almond that should do the trick.

Alright beach babes, get out their and show ‘em how glamorous your summer style can be!

Editor’s note: Got a celebrity look you’d like to copy or a trend you’d like to see incorporating healthy, non-toxic makeup? Send your questions to High Definition columnist Kristen Arnett at beauty@ecosalon.com

New York City based Kristen Arnett is an internationally renowned makeup artist and founder of the Green Beauty Team, styling high profile celebrities and runway models as well as a sought after beauty expert, educator and teacher for other makeup artists.

Image: Ellen Von Unwerth for GUESS Inc.

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