WHAT IT IS
Full disclosure: There are five beloved brands in my beauty stable that I hold to exceptionally high standards, and Clinique’s in the clique. (Inquiring investigators who insist, let’s just say the other four brands use flowers as their respective emblems – three roses, one orchid – and leave it at that.)
Anecdote time. Not too many moons ago, a fellow beauty scribe and I had a most spirited squabble over the merits of mascara. Leaving aside the arcane allure of lashes – alien observers would be baffled by our all-consuming obsession with the length of the hairs around our eyes – we eventually decided that mascara’s the makeup equivalent of the LBD.
Why? For starters, mascara is deceptively simple – I mean, it’s just sooty sticky stuff, if you get down to it – but incredibly polarising and deeply personal; who hasn’t had the confounding experience of test-driving a girlfriend’s go-to product, only to be “rewarded” by lumps and clumps?
But back to Clinique’s sexy new star. Dubbed the Lash Power Feathering Mascara, it’s an amiable under-performer – and I mean it in the best way possible.
Let me explain. Clinique positions this hybrid as the best of many worlds. The Lash Power Feathering Mascara is said to be bodybuilding (in the sense that it builds both length and volume) as well as water-resistant and removable with warm water; intuitively designed and customisable for as much or as little drama as you like.
So, to recap: This mascara does everything just well enough to be universally likeable. In short, it’s the quintessential LBD for your eyes.
WHAT WE THINK ABOUT …
THE PACKAGING
Aesthetically speaking, this mascara’s matte silver exterior is lovely enough, but all “beauty people” (which is the catch-all epithet my beloved editor likes to use) will know that it’s the instrument that matters.
Pens at the ready? Take your seat at the back of this virtual cosmetics classroom, because it’s about to get a tad technical here.
Now, imagine yourself twisting open a mascara tube and inspecting the “wiper” – that’ll be the silicone band encircling the opening. I’ve found that a vexing number of makeup reviewers neglect to mention this incredibly important bit of beauty anatomy; an egregious and particularly onerous omission, in my opinion.
Here’s why. The wiper is quite literally the gatekeeper of your product: As you whip the wand out of its sheath, the width of the wiper determines precisely how much product gets deposited onto the bristles, as opposed to being forced back down into the tube. Too narrow a wiper and you’ll be left high and dry with undercoated bristles; too loose a wiper and you’ll end up with large globs of formula that will clump up your lashes.
Clinique’s Lash Power Feathering Mascara is pretty much the Goldilocks of the wiper bunch: Not too much, not too little. The brush itself is a bravura showcase of Clinique’s clinical know-how. Delightfully dense and pleasingly pliable, the finely spaced teeth divides and conquers individual hairs for true-to-name, finely feathered lashes. An absolute joy to use.
THE PRODUCT
For something so ostensibly frivolous, there is intense intellectual pleasure to be had when going about your beauty research (and really, the raison d’etre for my professional being is to make you, dear reader, more keenly aware of the intrinsic beauty of your beauty products).
Right this very instant, I’m particularly taken by my own dawning realisation that product and packaging can’t be parsed into discrete parts, not least when it comes to mascara. Here’s a little philosophical puzzle: At what point does an individual wand or blobs of black goop become recognisable as the cosmetic staple we call mascara?
If you must break it down, the Lash Power Feathering Mascara boasts a formula that’s fortified with modern alchemy conjured up by Clinique’s lab-coated geniuses, the star of which is a complex molecular chain dubbed pullulan that literally pulls apart like sticky caramel, funnelling the sweat-resistant waxes, polymers and pigments from the root to the tip of your lash.
In the interests of this review, I smeared my hands with the goo and tried teasing it apart with my fingers. I’ll say that the consistency is a tad runnier than usual: A good thing in my beauty books, because that usually translates to less clumping.
THE RESULTS
The results? Let’s just say I had to switch to contacts because the lenses of my spectacles kept getting smudged by my now-generously girthed lashes – a most pleasant inconvenience, if you ask me.
Now for some humble bragging. Most of my (green-eyed?) girlfriends have complimented me on my reasonably long, poker-straight lashes, so I was hoping the “feathering” formula would make my follicles fly up like wings, so to speak. And by golly, it did!
Of course, crimping with a curler was par for the course, but the padded “lift” afforded by this product lasted me a good seven hours. There was a noticeable deflation of my mini eye “wings” around the five hour mark, but it was nothing I couldn’t get behind. I’ll note that the effect, while super-pretty, is also subtle enough for day; don't expect this tube to be a substitute for red carpet falsies.
There’s another wee caveat. Warm water won't get rid of the soot; I’ll eat my Philip Treacy hat if anyone out there can definitively demonstrate that H20 alone can dislodge all traces of one’s makeup. Massaging the orbital area with a cotton pad of nourishing facial oils is your best bet for cleansing without pulling and tugging.
And now for a barrage of stray observations and personal tips. Pet beauty peeve: Girls in the powder-room pumping their wands like a car tire inflator. The excess air in the bottle acts as a desiccant, so you’ll end up a flaky fright the next time you pull out your wand.
To circumvent the compulsion to pump, do what I do: Imagine your mascara wand to be the corkscrew in a wine bottle. (Obligatory alcohol shout-out.) To retrieve your “corkscrew”, swivel it out in a smooth, spiralling motion. Viola! You’ll pick up the perfect amount of product.
All things considered, Clinique’s Lash Power Feathering Mascara is an exceptionally pleasant product, and I forsee this being a permanent fixture in my everyday makeup wardrobe. What did I say about this being a universal LBD?
Total Score: 22/25
Clinique Lash Power Feathering Mascara in Black Onyx and Dark Chocolate, $38 each, is available at Clinique counters from April 2014. For more information, visit www.clinique.com.sg and follow Clinique Singapore on Facebook.