Future Icon: This wonder product can fake brow hairs where there are none

by Aisling Keenan
01st May 2019

It’s universally acknowledged that pretty much any woman who was a teen or pre-teen in the 90s struggles to this day with sparse brows, decimated by over-plucking. But there is help at hand for faking brow hairs – and it really looks believable…

Unless you’re particularly blessed in the brow department, or straight up just don’t care for filling in your brows, chances are you’ve tried a few different methods. I personally fill my eyebrows because I’ve got more gaps than an episode of Law & Order SVU, but I’ve never really achieved a fake hair look – it’s always more just ‘colour this bit in and hope no one looks closely’.

Tried and tested

I’ve used Urban Decay Brow Beater (a fantastic product, tiny nib and a spoolie on the end), I’ve tried Anastasia Beverly Hills Dip Brow Pomade (also fantastic, but definitely erring on the dramatic brow side of things) and I’ve gone through the entire Benefit brow arsenal, but never have I seen anything that genuinely looked like hair.

Then, sometime last year, I interviewed Katie Jane Hughes. She’s a makeup artist and influencer (of me) and is one of the coolest people I’ve ever had the pleasure of chatting to. Utterly nonchalant in the best way, she talks about beauty like she enjoys it – her Instagram Lives speak to that same enjoyment.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Katie Jane Hughes (@katiejanehughes) on Jan 27, 2019 at 12:54pm PST

Real life v Instagram

She told me she used Ardell Stroke A Brow on her eyebrows and I was like, oh cool. Sounds nice. Your brows are stunning and fluffy though, so of course they’d be a super advertisement for the product. But then…

I saw what her brows actually looked like and did a major double take. They are incredibly sparse, gaps all over the place and clearly have been over-plucked in the past. I realised that Stroke A Brow was working HARD for her.

So I ordered it and used it, and the brow compliments started rolling in. It’s like a really fine, felt-tip pen. I got the shade Medium Brown even though I’m blonde (reader, my roots are not blonde, needless to say), and it works really well. It’s so easy to feather on light strokes, faking hairs as you go. It would be very tempting to just colour in your entire brow with it – but don’t. I made that mistake for you.

But look, the picture above from Katie’s Instagram says it all. It’s really great. And believe it or not, it’s €10. BARG.