Had your eyebrows professionally shaped of late? Or maybe you’ve discovered the instant face-lifting effect of a brow gel? Either way, you’ve likely got Anastasia Soare to thank.
Once Hollywood’s best-kept secret, the Anastasia Beverly Hills founder is now a global beauty authority. Here, she shares her thoughts with Cosmo on brow blindness, her best advice for sculpting arches that show off your angles, and the one brow trend she hopes you’ll never try.
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beauty school...
A natural brow is always the most flattering
Take it from the woman who’s shaped the arches of everyone from Cindy Crawford to Oprah – it’s far more flattering to work with what you’ve been given, rather than trying to completely change your features.
“When you are young, you want to change everything about yourself because you don’t like anything, but I say, enjoy everything you have because it’s yours—it’s youth! You have it and you take it for granted, or you pluck it out, but just be you,” Anastasia advises.
She recommends enhancing the brows you already have with makeup. “I think every woman is beautiful, and we use makeup to bring the perfect balance and proportion within your face. Use makeup as your tool to create, but keep what makes you, you—it’s what makes you special.”
Don't let brow blindness happen to you
If your phone has done that thing recently where it resurfaces unprompted pics from your camera roll, you may have encountered some concerning shots that point to the historical phenomenon taking over TikTok: brow blindness.
Brow blindness is a very real beauty condition, whereby we completely lose any and all perspective on the way our brows really look. When we’re simply too deep in the trend, it can be tough to know what’s flattering and what’s not—which is why a trip down memory lane can sometimes reveal we once rocked the wrong style.
“In 2016, everyone wanted blocky eyebrows. We launched our Dip Brow Pomade in 2014 and I did a tutorial that demonstrated how to work with it—you take a small amount of the pomade on the brow brush, and then you swipe the brush on the cap of the product to remove the excess,” Anastasia recalls. “But everyone just went in and applied the pomade straight to the eyebrows!”
Anastasia says the best way to avoid brow blindness is to forget the trends and focus on what truly suits your face. “I fought with my daughter about it at the time, saying ‘No, this is too heavy,’ but she said, ‘Mum, this is what the customer wants.’ I thought, ‘Eventually, they will figure it out,’ and now our customers are experts and want a natural-looking brow.”
Over-tweezed arches aren't reversible
Internet culture might argue that pin-thin brows are making a comeback (thanks for that, Gabbriette), but despite what TikTok is telling you, tweezing your brows into oblivion could cause lasting trauma—and we’re not just talking about the aforementioned mental toll it’ll take when the trend changes again after a few years.
“Please don’t over-tweeze,” pleads Anastasia. “Over-tweezing is damaging because the eyebrow doesn’t grow!” She suggests experimenting with less permanent methods to tap into a trend instead, such as brow bleach or makeup. “You can explore different looks with as many products as you like – every colour, every shape, anything you want—as long as you don’t over-tweeze.”
The golden ratio is really all you need to know
Not sure what brow shape suits you? According to Anastasia , it ’s all in the architecture of your face. Follow the mathematical principle of thirds and you’ll find visual harmony within your features, as the brow shape brings balance and symmetry to the face.
“I was a victim of ’80s fashion in Romania, with pencil-thin, round eyebrows, so I always looked surprised in photographs. I had studied art, where I was taught that if you wanted to change an emotion when drawing a portrait of someone, you change their eye brows ,” explains Anastasia of her trademark brow-shaping technique.
“I started going to the library to revisit what I had learnt about the Leonardo da Vinci theory of proportion. He did several studies on the Golden Ratio of the body and face and applied it to all his work, so I thought, ‘Wow—maybe I could apply that to the eyebrows.’”
The Golden Ratio became Anastasia’s signature, and she now utilises this method for all her brow services. If you can’t make it to the newly revamped David Jones Bourke Street beauty floor—which plays host to the only Anastasia Beverly Hills brow studio in the Southern Hemisphere—see below for how you can DIY the technique at home.
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Anastasia's golden ratio
- Begin by marking the start of your brow, which should be directly above the centre of your nostrils.
- Next, mark where your brows should end; where the corners of your nostrils align with the outer corners of your eyes.
- For the arch, identify and align the highest point of the arch with the tip of the nose and the centre of the iris.
- Fill in the brow using light, feathery strokes to mimic natural brow hair, following the shape you’ve mapped out.
This article originally appeared in Issue 02 of Cosmopolitan Australia. Get your copy and subscribe to future issues here.
