Moi, in red eyeshadow (well it’s more of a pink tone, but let me have this one, please)? Take. It. In. Bet that’s a sight you’d never see, eh? But after seeing ruby hues be bandied about at Fashion Weeks and in the pages of my beauty-centric reading material, I thought why not push the eyeshadow boat out and trial it for ‘The Trend’. How hard can pulling off a russet blend on the eyes be? Answer: a wee bit tricky. Armed with Tom Ford’s Beauty Eye Colour Quad in Burnished Amber* in one hand and a MAC 217 in the other, here’s what I took away from the red eyed experience…
Stick with shimmer. A slight glow in the texture of the shadow will help to avoid a ‘punched in the face’ or even worse, eye infection look. Nice. But steer clear of anything too glittery or you’ll be in with a chance of recreating the eye makeup that I sported in my Year 8 school photo courtesy of a pink glitter shadow crayon I was given for my birthday.
Line that waterline! If there’s one repugnant property of red, it’s that it often unattractively enhances any other areas of redness in the face, which I most notably find on the waterline; to detract from this, get lining. I went for the flesh-toned MAC Chromographic Pencil in NC15-NW20, but black, brown, whatever you fancy – slick it on.
Lashings of Mascara. Lashings. I go heavy with the mascara anyway so this was an easy hurdle for me to stride over, but a strong halo of black around the eyes helps to diffuse anything that could look a little ‘pink eye’ about the situation. And that is most definitely something we do not want.
Keep it simple. I fall into the beginner stage of eyeshadow wearers so of course I’m going to preach what I practice here – but less is more. I used just one shade from the quad, the top-right, pinki-er of the two red colours and applied it all over the lid and on the outer corner under the eye. I then took a MAC 224 dipped in face powder to blend it out to avoid the colour being pulled up above the eye socket too much. Simples.
The best of the rest of the rust coloured bunch? MAC Cranberry Eyeshadow, Sleek Eye Dust in Inferno, Barry M Dazzle Dust in Winter Berry, NARS Eyeshadow in Grenadines, and & Other Stories Eyeshadow in Worsted Aubergine.
By the time I finished my last spot of blending I was actually not as uneasy with a blushed-up lid as I expected to be. Arguably it won’t become my daily eye shade of choice, but I think I’ll end up cracking out it again as a bit of an evening colour nod, perhaps with a slick of liner. Am I heading for a crimson crush?
*PR Sample
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