I love to watch makeup tutorials and look at print ads to copy makeup looks that I like. Its refreshing to watch how other makeup artists work and gives me ideas for myself and clients. After I've given a makeup lesson, I often recommend that clients watch online tutorials to keep practicing. Sometimes they come back and say they've tried a specific look, followed the directions perfectly, and it looked nothing like it was supposed to look. This is almost always because they had a different shaped eye than the model.
Knowing your eye shape will help you tweak any makeup to look perfect on you. Now that being said, this is not about old fashioned rules saying that certain shapes shouldn't wear certain makeup. I believe everyone can wear whatever they like and that rules are made to be broken. Almost all the pictures I see of Taylor Swift she's wearing fully closed in smokey eye makeup on her small narrow eyes. That's a major rule broken but she counter balances the closed in eye with full lashes and a highlight on the inner corners of her eye. This will just be a guide to help you see what you've got and how to enhance it.
Almond eyes: have a cat-like shape, a good amount of width horizontally and they can be tilted up at the outer corners or down. With almond eyes you can pretty much wear any makeup you like. Lucky!
Small eyes: are proportionately smaller than the other features of the face. Compare one eye to the tip of the nose or to the lips and see if its significantly smaller. Smaller eyes look amazing with a flesh toned liner on the waterline, full lashes on the outer corners, and a well defined crease to open the eye up. Kitten eyeliner with light shimmering shadow under the eye is absolutely beautiful on small eyes.
Wide set eyes: have a space between the eyes that is wider than one of your eyes. With wide set eyes breakout the makeup and have fun because you can wear anything and look great!
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Close set eyes: have less than the width of one eye between the two eyes. By concentrating darker shadow and lashes at the outer corners you can pull your eyes apart and still wear a fully lined smokey eye. The outer corner flick of kitten eyeliner is a great trick to pull eyes apart. Just make sure the liner at the inner corner is thin.
Round eyes: are very open and do not taper off they way almond eyes do. If you've been told you have doll eyes or have innocent eyes they're probably round. Round eyes will look beautifully child-like if you keep the makeup light and shimmery with full lashes. For sultry Bette Davis eyes use darker shadows to define the crease and a heavy eyeliner.
Prominent eyes: are usually larger than average and are the dominant feature on the face because in profile they come farther out than the brow bone. Because you don't have to worry about making prominent eyes look smaller, you can choose very dark colors and go for serious dramatic makeup. To create some depth and give the illusion of a crease, find your socket bone with your finger, use a crease brush to apply shadow on top of this bone, and this will create a crease where there was none before.
Keep in mind that you'll most likely fall in at least a couple of these categories. I fall into three of them; round, prominent, and wide set. No matter what shape you've got, it's beautiful because it's yours. This is all about learning to enhance what you have and to feel pretty. I hope this helps you get a bit more out of your makeup application and maybe some new ideas for Holiday parties.
-Layne
Layne is a licensed aesthetician and makeup artist working at Urban Sanctuary in Athens, GA. She writes the bi-weekly column, Down and Out Beauty.
