I bat my eyelashes at a quizzical-looking friend, demanding he play the “notice anything different about my face?” game. “And I don’t even have any make-up on,” I yelp. “Yep. They make a small yet very significant difference to your face
,” he announces finally.
During the two weeks following my first encounter with eyelash extensions, I play this game a lot.
It’s a great two weeks. I’m ever-ready to dress up as Holly Golightly, or twist my hair in a loose chignon, suck in my cheeks and make like a moody French actress who hangs out smoking and blinking seductively at broody French men.
Which I find surprising. Because they’re just eyelashes. But having these fluttery Disneyesque eye-fringes as a permanent feature for two weeks helps me appreciate why humans have been obsessing over “aesthetic adornment” since the Bronze Age.
The ancient Egyptians copped that fluttery lashes handily protected their eyes from sand and had an aphrodisiac effect, so they lashed on the kohl. Remember Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra? Actually, she had an unfair advantage, being born with a freaky double set of eyelashes.
It also makes me realise that mascara and eyelash curlers have their limitations – something I wish someone had told my cousin and me, aged 11, sitting in her bedroom, holding a lighter – a naked-flame cigarette lighter, not a hairdryer as often recommended – under an eyelash curler for a few seconds before clamping it to our delicate lashes for longer than was healthy.
According to a report from Euromonitor, mascara sales – of products such as Benefit’s They’re Real and Longer than Life by Nars and then, confusingly, Shu Uemura’s Ultimate Natural – account for 13.8 per cent of the global “colour cosmetics” market (make-up to you and me).
But remember when the mascara merchants had to admit they were exaggerating a tiny bit when they suggested we'd look like Penelope Cruz, for example? People were twigging that the more coats they lashed on, the less they were looking Penelope and more Alex in Clockwork Orange. So imagine our relief when the small-print finally revealed their make-up artistes were using tools not readily to hand in our make-up bags. Such as digital-enhancing techniques and lots of eyelash extensions.
The first false eyelashes made their appearance when film director DW Griffith wanted Seena Owen to have lashes “that brushed her cheeks, to make her eyes shine larger than life.” Now that’s a look that required more than mere mascara.
Then you notice – in the mirror of ladies’ toilets on Saturday nights, at weddings, on Facebook; even bootcamp, for God’s sake – there is indeed more than just mascara going on, with more eyelash-batting than an alpaca convention.
So naturally, I go looking for eyelash extensions. I try The Hive Salon on South George’s Street and once I confirm that “mink eyelash extensions” bear no relation to a fur coat, we agree on a “full application” that will cost €100 and have me looking like an alpaca for up to two weeks, maybe even longer – “if you take care of them”. A corner of my brain is asking if the money might be better spent on say, two weeks of food from Lidl or five blow-drys. I carry on.
By alpaca-time, less than two weeks after my first call, the eyelash-extension world has moved on and The Hive is recommending I go with Novalash extensions instead of minks; they’re considerably cheaper at €50, but apparently the same quality, just longer-lasting and “less heavy on the eye”.
It takes about 30 minutes under a plush, grey blanket while a zillion tiny individual lashes – as opposed to the old-fashioned full strip – are applied to my own. Will these change my life, I ask? They will, says the steady-handed beauty therapist.
And when she holds up the mirror for the grand reveal, I do notice, wow – a small yet significant difference.
They add subtle definition that gives a kind of skinny-eyeliner illusion. I get over the old fake-eyelash paranoia – that a strip will land on your cheek or you’ll wake up on Sunday morning further sickened by the sight of glittery, mascara-encrusted falsies on the pillow – when it dawns that they’re staying put.
Two weeks on, they still look like really good, full eyelashes. And they’re an easy, relatively quick, relatively cheap way of prettifying. I’ll miss them when they start to flutter away, just as when the shellac starts to chip or the tan fades or the blowdry needs to be washed.
But the thought of adding yet another appointment (these require monthly touch-ups) to 2014’s already high-maintenance beauty ritual of nails, hair and brows kind of stresses me out.
I’ll return to the extensions, but maybe only for special occasions that demand lashes that brush my cheeks and make my eyes shine larger than life. Like an alpaca.
Now where’s that Super Mega Volume Express Vibrating Boost mascara ...
