The crescendo of my daily cut crease phase is over, and for the last few weeks, I’ve been relaxing into a new comfort zone with makeup. Instead of doing the daily full face, I’ve downsized to concealer and bronzer, for the most part. On my eyes, I’ve been saving liquid liner for when it matters and relying on mascara to shoulder the eye-defining.
For eyeshadow, I’ve paired it way down from the days of glitter glue and falsies. Lately, I’ve been going for a single wash of color using one – maybe two shadows to create a natural but still dramatic smokey eye. Mostly it’s just me smudging one to two soft brown eyeshadows on my eyes and calling it good.
Typically, I go for a shade which is about four to six shades darker than my skin tone. For me, it’s the perfect balance between the tone of my skin and the tone of actual eye shadow. The closest I’ve come to shade names are soft brown, cashmere, taupe, beige… You get my drift. (I’m white AF, so “beige” is a deep shadow color on me, ok?)
I regularly use the browns from my e.l.f. Mad for Matte palettes. Really any neutral brown is workable as long as it’s also buildable.
In a way, it’s like bringing the color of your natural crease all the way down to your lash line. The result is a smokey eye that I have deemed daytime- or evening-appropriate. It looks just as good when you’re wearing a flannel with jeans as it does with a black, strappy dress. Mauve-toned and rosey-taupe colors are also fun to play with and can make an already soft look even softer.
Recently, a similar look went down a New York Fashion Week runway during the Brock F/W 2017 show. I loved the clothes, but the beauty look the models were wearing really stole my heart. I wasn’t surprised when I found out that Maybelline was behind the look! Maybelline does some of the best runway beauty looks.
Maybelline’s head artist, Gucci Westman, applied two brown shadows on the eyes and they completely steal the show. Specifically, she used the chocolate brown out of the new(-ish) Maybelline Total Temptation Shadow + Highlight Palette ($9.99). The other brown shadow she used to blend out the crease and lower lash line came from a Maybelline City Mini Palette in Downtown Sunrise ($5.56). Lastly, Maybelline Master Precise Skinny Eyeliner in Sharp Brown ($4.51) and Maybelline Total Temptation Mascara in Brownish Black ($7.99) tied everything together.
Do you see how this look is simultaneously romantic and rugged? It reminds me of the women in Godless (which is an awesome Netflix show that you should all watch!), they’re tough pioneer women in the old west, and this dusty, smokey look fits their aesthetic perfectly. Gucci Westman called it a “suede smokey eye,” as the whole looks was inspired by a pair of leather gloves.
Gucci also used a Maybelline lipstick as a blush for this look and now I want to try it! Cream lipstick as blush might actually work now that foundation is less of a daily thing for me. I also feel like cream eyeshadows would be great for this kind of look since the messiness of finger application totally aligns with this look. It’s the lazy girl’s smokey eye! What’s not to love?