All products are independently selected by our editors. If you buy something, we may earn an affiliate commission.
Raise your hand if you're ever looked at red eye shadow in a palette, or lining the aisles of Sephora, and wondered, how the heck would I ever wear that? Even as a beauty editor at the magazined dubbed "The Beauty Expert," I've never quite been able to wrap my head around how to pull it off in real life. Until now. Backstage at Alberta Ferretti's fall 2017 show, makeup artist Tom Pecheux just schooled us on how to apply the crimson hue on your lids and actually look sexy.
The secret is to use black, and lots of it. Starting with your average black eyeliner pencil, Pecheux traced the waterlines and the top and bottom lashes, filled in the inner and outer corners of the lids—leaving the center of the lids completely bare—scribbled it across the creases of the eyes, and blended it past the outer corners to create an almond shape.
Once that was complete, he took a matte red cream (M.A.C. Chromocake in Red to be exact), and pressed it onto the center of the lid (which if you remember, was left blank), layering it until the color was bright and opaque. "The red and black aren't layered, they're next to each other, but because the black is a pencil, it's greasy and it's going to melt very slightly into the red so the edges are diffused. In fact, Pecheux kept telling the makeup artists on his team to get even messier than they would expect, layering M.A.C. Fluidline Gel in Blacktrack over the pencil to really enhance the smudgy effect. "I don't want it to look too pretty," he explained. "It looks better if it's not too sweet and it makes a strong statement." You can see a close up of the red eye shadow surrounded by black pencil below:
Instagram content
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
Once there was a good balance of red and black, Pecheux set the black pencil in place with a matching powder, gently buffing it on top. Skipping mascara, he finished with a touch of antique gold shimmer in the inner corners, which both brightened up the eye area and brought up the sex appeal. "Mrs. Ferretti always likes a little va va voom," he laughed.
Pecheux used a nice analogy to explain why this look is so appealing (besides that fact it was being worn by the likes of Gigi and Bella Hadid, Sarah Sampaio, and gorgeous newcomer Halima Aden). "It's like the flashing of a traffic light," he explained. "By having the red eye shadow just in the center of the eyes, it comes as a surprise that you only see when you blink or move your head," he said. "Because first all you see is black, which always looks great, but then you see a flash of red and you're like like, Ooh!"
And one last word of advice when wearing red eye shadow: Keep your skin as natural-looking at possible. That doesn't mean don't use concealer of foundation (who are we kidding here), but don't use something that's too matte, too heavy, or too luminous (read: shimmer), and please, whatever you do, tone down the contouring. "If your foundation looks overworked or too opaque, makeup like this doesn't work," said Pecheux. "But if your skin looks flawless and glowy you can do whatever you want on your face. Seriously."
Take a trip back in time to see what brow trends looked like over the past 100 years:
