This month Max Factor launches yet another new mascara, one that promises to make lashes look up to 80 per cent longer. It will join the 187 new mascaras introduced to the UK market between October 2008 and 2009, and the 312 launched in the US (this from a Mintel “Mascara Launch” report – really; there are so many that they get their own paper).
It seems impossible, and yet consider, according to high street chain Boots, that there are “approximately 600 different mascaras in our largest stores”. Meanwhile, Superdrug has seen sales of false lashes increase 97 per cent – almost double the number sold this time last year – and the UK false eyelashes business is now worth a reported £10m a year.
The depth of the trend became clear in April, when Michelle Obama arrived at Buckingham Palace wearing ... false eyelashes. Now, it seems, they know no age or cultural limit.
“My two teenage daughters always ask if they can wear false lashes if they are going to a party – and they already have long lashes,” says make-up artist Jackie Tyson. “Then, recently I did Yoko Ono’s make-up for an appearance on the BBC’s Later With Jools Holland: false lashes and red lipstick. She is 76 and she looked great.”
“It goes back to the Hollywood glamour of the 1930s and 1940s, when all the stars had lash inserts,” Tyson adds. “That lasted until the 1960s, when Twiggy took the false lash look to the extreme, wearing several sets together.” Although there was a slight lull during the minimal, no-make-up 1990s, Tyson says, “in the past two or three years I don’t think I have made up a celebrity without lashes – at their request. I think they feel better once they have the lashes on, it gives them confidence.” Note that on talent show The X-Factor, both Cheryl Cole and Dannii Minogue wear them.
Make-up artist Kay Montano cites the rise of individual eyelashes. This involves the exacting and subtle application of single lashes in order to open up the eye. “About 10 years ago the average consumer might not have known about false lashes, but now it goes straight from the make-up artist’s mouth into the magazine – and then Eyelure makes them,” she says.
As Tyson points out, “People want to emulate their favourite stars”. But apart from a celebrity copycat culture, this fixation with lashes and lash-enhancing make-up may also underscore a more primordial yearning.
Dr Bernhard Fink, a research scientist at the Department of Sociobiology/Anthropology at the University of Goettingen in Germany, says: “Cosmetics and make-up exaggerate the features that men are usually sensitive to, thus making those women highly attractive to them. Eyes and eye gaze are of particular relevance in terms of showing interest and attention. It has been reported that people looking directly at an observer receive higher facial attractiveness judgments. I believe that showing exaggerated (and groomed) eyelashes highlights the eyes; it draws attention to them, not because the lashes per se are important, but because the eyes are the key features.”
Besides, Dr Fink points out, “hair tends to grow slower when we age. Thus, long eye lashes signal youth.”
And yet, says Aaron de Mey, artistic director for Lancôme, “We’re at the limit of how far it can go. The over-exaggerated lash looks too harsh. It’ll go back to the eye lash curler and a bit of brown mascara. There will always be mascara.”
