Beauty Dare: I Tried the Bleached-Brow Look

Tempted by Georgia May Jagger's bleached blonde brows (opens in new tab) from fashion week, but dually paranoid about actually dying them after Kendall Jenner's horror stories (opens in new tab), I had become determined to *fake* the experimental look. I mean, that's what makeup's for, right?

But because this is not the kind of look I trust myself with on the first try—I have extremely dark brows to begin with—I asked MAC Senior artist Keri Blair to work her magic. And lo and behold, she did so in 3 easy steps that are 100% doable, even for beginners. I promise. 

Grab your spoolie and take notes:

Step 1: Brush Concealer Into the Brows

Using a spoolie or a tooth brush, take a color correcting concealer and brush it through the hair going against the grain (the opposite way the hair lays). Be sure to start at the base of the brow towards the outer corner of the eye and work your way inwards so that you are covering the brows backwards, getting the undersides of the hair. Then, brush the brow hair in the other direction of how you'd normally comb them.

As far as choosing the right color concealer, it depends on the natural shade of your brows and how intense they are. "The important thing to remember is intensity, so the intensity of your concealer has to be the same intensity level of your eyebrows," explains Blair. "If it's not, it looks too gray."

For my brows, Blair used MAC's Studio Pro Conceal and Correct Palette in Light (opens in new tab), mixing peach and yellow tones to get the right shade to make my brow looks like they're blending in with my complexion.

Step 2: Add Another, Peachier Layer

Once you've got your base, you'll need to add another layer of color correction, but this time with even more peachier tones to cancel out the darkness further.

Pro Tip: If your brows are significantly lighter in color or thinner naturally, you might be able to skip the initial layer of product and just use this next warmer, peachier colored concealer solo—just make sure to do the same brushing-backward-then-forward step to ensure full coverage.

Step 3: Set with a Translucent Powder

Using a setting brush, finish your brows with translucent setting powder in and around your arches. If your brows are dark, you can mix in a little bit of peach color-correcting powder.

"If you're taking photographs and you really want the brows to disappear, you can use reflective pigment," explains Blair. "Then when the light or the flash hits it from the camera, it will blur the light and give the illusion the brow is more disappearing than it actual is."

Add a Statement Eye

"The great part about taking the brows down is that you have a little more to play with around the eye," she says. "You can go smoky or if you'd just like a cat eye, apply it as your normally would on top and bump things up a bit with liner on the water lines as well."

And so she gave me both smoky navy lids and a cat eye. See the latter in the video below:

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