Filling in eyebrows and putting on mascara is a time-consuming task that I truly loathe and that can be quite treacherous when it is done in the back of a taxi or on a bus, as it so often is.
I sought out a treatment that might help reduce the time spent on these morning tasks, but little did I know I would find something to eliminate them entirely.
“Lots of people say eyebrows should be sisters, not twins, but I think that’s a cop-out,” says Claudine King, whose salon on South William Street in Dublin has been consistently busy since it opened in December.
She is a true perfectionist and has an eye for symmetry, evident in the two pretty much identical brows I left with after she had threaded and tinted them. They had been thin at the edges and uneven all over, but now they are dark and even enough to leave au naturel.
I also had a treatment called the Yumi lash perm and tint, which takes about 45 minutes and costs €80. It involves curling the lashes with a perm solution and tinting them so they appear fuller and open the eye in the same way mascara would. They last for as long as your lashes do (about six to eight weeks) and can be freshened up with a tint.
My eyes felt strained afterwards, because the perm is initially quite tight, and when I woke up the next day, I felt a little like Dolly Parton. That feeling faded in a couple of days, however, as the curl fell a little and the lashes fanned out, leaving me with natural-looking, enhanced lashes that don’t need mascara during the day. So the moral of the story is: if you fancy a make-up cop-out, head to Claudine, who – unlike me – does not do things by halves.
