Vintage Eyebrows

Is there such a thing? Well yes, however I have worked with face shapes and brow reshaping and grooming for years and to be honest the best shape is your natural shape with perhaps a bit of tweaking here and there. There are so many fantastic products on the market these days so there should be no reason to neglect your brows! My top tips for getting the perfect brows are as follows.

NEVER over pluck! If you are unsure of what shape will suit your face then please leave it to a professional. Brow grooming is fairly inexpensive and widely available so give your brows a treat.

Use a pencil or a brow wax or powder. All very good products so find what you feel comfortable using. Always remember to sharpen your pencil, this makes a huge difference to the products pay off!

Invest in a good pair of tweezers, chances are they will last you almost a life time (or until you loose them, like I often do!) You will notice the difference and always remove the hair and the follicle, bad tweezers can cause breakage and make it harder to remove the hair. Tweezerman have always been my favorite and they offer a lifetime of free sharpening too!

When tweezering the hair it is handy to have a small brush to brush the hair upwards, this gives a better indication of where the hair is uneven and needs to be plucked. Focus most of your plucking underneath the brow. Only tackle the above if you are confident with your shape and you feel you have only a few hair s to take to complete the shape. 

Try to give at least one hour prior to make up application as plucking can leave the skin very red and volatile. Your make up may not sit very well on hot red skin!

Filling in your brow … for a vintage brow you HAVE to apply product to create a shape. The best and simplest way to shape your brow is to take a pencil/brush and hold it at the side of your nose drawing an imaginary straight line through the center of your eye, with the pencil brush still sitting on the side of your nose. Put an invisible mark where this line runs through your brow, as this is the peak of your shape. Now draw one line with your pencil/brush starting at the inner top corner of the brow working across the top in one straight smooth line and stop at your imaginary peak. Turn the brush and beginning your second line again along the top but following the brow bone.  Take your pencil/brush and now sit it again at the side of your nose however this time draw your imaginary line going through the outside corner of your eye. Again make a mental mark when this line runs through your eyebrow, as this should be where the brow line stops. You now have your main shape and you can now soflty fill in underneath.

The vintage brow is a focal point of the face, sadly the modern women gives less time if any to this area of her make up routine which is such a shame as I feel a groomed brow can really shape your face and create a dramatic statement. The brow has taken on many shapes and forms through out the decade’s  … the classic 1920’s brow was very thin, rounded and arched, an extreme image just like the black and white style of the big screen. The 1930’s brow was still very oval however very long and strong. The 1940’s eyebrow was a little more wearable for the girls back home, less plucked and fuller with a good strong shape. We had now lost the oval shape and were following the shape of the brow bone, so more linear. The 1950’s brow, which I must add is my favorite was very strong and very full, a square pointed shape again with a more linear feel however moving away from the natural feel of the 1940’s. The vintage brow continued to be an important part of a woman’s style throughout most of the previous decades until perhaps the 1990’s when women beauty’s took on a more natural appearance and the brow was less groomed giving a ‘no make up look’.

Amanda Moorhouse x

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