>>>beauty banter: HOW TO STOP UNDER-EYE SMUDGE

For the French it is considered insouciantly chic and subtly sexy but accidental bedroom eyes (i.e. – black smudges underneath your eyes)  can be really make or break your satisfaction with your daily face. The good news is, is that there is a very quick and simple solution to smudgy eye soot.

To appreciate how this sweet and simple solution will work it is important to understand why eye smudge plagues us in the first place. You might be surprised and pleased to read – the main reason isn’t because your eyeliner or mascara is slippery and shitty. The main reason you end up with black smudges under your eye is caused by the emollient products you have placed around your eye, probably before you even gone near your eyes with a mascara wand. Because your eye cream/foundation/moisturiser/concealer/whatever you have chosen to moisturise or conceal your eyes is emollient, it is designed to move with and condition the skin – hence it is nice and soft and moist and cushion-y, perfect for hydrating and making you look fresh and awake. It is also perfect for picking up the black pigment from your lashes whenever you blink some hundred million times* per day. Or for creeping up near your eyeliner and dragging it downwards causing panda eyes. You may even notice you get some interesting looking black marks above your eyes from where you mascara coated lashes have tickled the moist, damp skin above your eye socket all day. Chances are you may have thrown away many a mascara or eyeliner in frustration that it promised to be non-smudge and appeared not to be so, when in fact it probably does stand up to that claim very well in ideal conditions.

You too can create ideal conditions for flawlessness and longevity of eye and face make-up – just grab the pressed or loose powder that you use to set your make-up and dab some (ideally with a smallish brush) around the areas that you normally get the black marks. This will dry down the moisture that sits on the surface of the skin and picks up the dark pigment. So when you blink, instead of your mascaraed lashes hitting a damp surface and smudging, they will hit a dry surface and keep your under eyes looking fresh and smudge free. If you dust a little bit of powder just under where you have carefully applied your eyeliner this will also soak up any moisture and oil, meaning that your eyeliner is locked into place and won’t slide down your under eyes. The best powder to use is a translucent powder like MAC’s Prep and Prime Transparent Finishing Powder as this is designed to soak up oil, hold liquids underneath in place, blur and diffuse skin as well as being super lightweight and invisible, almost like you haven’t put anything on at all. Failing that just use which ever light weight face powder you have on hand, anything soft and powdery will help to set everything in place. If you’re worried about looking dry and crepe-y under the eye area, make sure you press it on firmly so it’s not sitting on the surface, and only place it where you find you get smudges normally, leaving the rest as normal.

Try this trick out tomorrow and feel refreshed and radiant with wide awake, smudge free peepers. See the difference! Feel the freedom from accidental bedroom eyes! Save bedroom eyes for the bedroom/Saturday night! Look appropriate Mon-Fri! And maybe the next day you can dig out all those mascaras and eyeliners you cast aside as a waste of time, and enjoy all their promised smudge free benefits.

*This is probably an exaggeration.