The Lipstick Page Forums Beauty Blog: How to: Soft, smoky eyes... How to: Soft, smoky eyes... Posted by Dain, Thursday, November 17, 2005 2:21 PM (Eastern) This is my favorite eye look, in my limited arsenal. The trick is to layer, and to use shimmery, complex colors. Pure, basic colors (like NARS Pandora) are best left for strong looks. There are two ways to do soft, smoky eyes. One, a dark, metallic shade combined with a light tone to soften any hard edges. Two, a slick, dark eyeliner (preferably without shimmer), and a smoky, medium-tone shimmer. Add a third element, and you've got a more complicated eye—you want to keep it "soft". ONE What I like to do is use a little soft eyeliner, nothing as harsh as black, like MAC Teddy, for a little definition. I make a thick, smudgy line, and layer a deep shimmery shade over it: like Shu Uemura ME 985 (a cult item, and will forever be so), Vincent Longo Sweet Dreams (Kevyn Aucoin's personal fave), NARS Ashes to Ashes, Stila Diamond Lil. Wait a minute, are these all essentially the same color? Gunmetal brown shimmer shadowed by violet tones? To varying degrees, yes. I use a little bit of shadow, with a soft brush, and apply a "wedge" (concentrated color on the outer third of the lid, more intense closer to the lashes, diffuse as it approaches the brows and the inner corner of the eye). I then take a soft, pastel shade, usually a lilac (but you can use a soft sueded blue, a celadon, a gilded rose, a champagne, as you see fit) on the inner half of the lid, and at the edges of the "wedge" to soften it. Sounds complicated. Well, it is, until you get the hang of it, but it's really quite simple in execution. Be sparing with pigment, light with the brush, and use the light shade to blend and soften, and you'll be fine. This is, of course, the neutral option. You can also try, instead of a brown-based metallic wedge, a soft olive with a peach, or a dusky violet with soft gold, a quiet slate with a silky ivory, and so on... just be aware that colors "pop out", rather than "recede", so the look may be bolder than "soft and smoky" if you're not careful. The trick, I think, whether you work with brown or some other color, is to choose an accent color that is soft and smooth, and above all, no harsh shimmer. The moment you add frost into the equation, it's tacky. (Three NARS eyeshadows, Nepal, Cyprus, and Bombshell, are great for this purpose.) TWO Here, I suggest you begin with a dark, dark shade of eyeliner, fairly plain. I like MAC Fluidlines for this, like Blacktrack (black) or Dipdown (expresso). You can try a more colorful version, like navy or violet or forest green or olive (MAC does have all of these colors, Waveline, Macroviolet, Shade, and Sweet Sage, respectively), but I think that tends to wander away from "soft and smoky"—you'd have to pair very neutral colors with them to tone down the color. You can use pencils, of course. The trick with this look is to be sparing with liner. While in Look One you made a dark shade soft by making it diffuse (the purpose of the "wedge"), here, the liner is only meant to give definition to the shape of the eye, and the appearance of thick, lush lashes. Use a teeny bit of product, and blend it to death into the lashes (I'd recommend a flat synthetic eyeliner brush for this). Some other colors to consider: NARS Thunderball, any dark shade by Dior, Trish Deep Aubergine, Laura Mercier Deep Night, Stila Diamond Lil—just make sure the color is sufficiently pigmented not to look spotty. Then, a wash of a smoky, dusky, sueded color, your choice. If you've used a fairly neutral color for liner, you can choose any color you want: NARS Earth Angel (two beautiful dusky shades, one a mauve, the other an olive), Stila Viola or Stila Grace (lavenders, one grey-based, the other taupey), Revlon Spring Moss (soft beautiful greens... all of the Revlon Quads are great for this), Urban Decay Urb (celadon shimmer with gold), NARS Bombshell (dove grey), NARS Key Largo (sugary bronze), Dior Mauve Chic (exactly as the name implies... soft, chic mauves), Dior Urbanity (delicious sueded colors, mauve, lavender, slate, etc.), NARS Cairo/Barbuda/Ondine (NARS' versions of sueded colors, in complex variations of chmpagne, rose, mauve, and plum), MAC Trax (a complex color to describe... let's say it's rose-mauve-plum and flecked with shimmer), MAC Shale (lavender-grey with shimmer). Choose a color of about medium depth, unless you're a great deal darker or paler. Soft shimmer is a good idea. The more complex, again, the better. If it's a shade that you can't really define, you know you've done a good job picking—umm... is Stila Viola lavender or mauve or taupe or grey or what? All! Oh, ok. Then what's Grace? Is it really a brown or is it really a lavender? Right in between. Again, I'd avoid frost—frost draws attention, and the purpose of this exercise is soft and smoky. And finally, choose a color with a brown or grey base... you want something "dusky", "sueded", "smoky"... But soft. What about color combinations? Navy looks good with taupe or bronze, white or ivory, peach or pink, and sometimes a little gold (or you can just try NARS Blue Angel, the colors come already chosen for you). Dark green looks good with white, peach, bronze, silver, and mauve. Olive looks good with... peach, bronze, copper, grey, mauves and lavenders. Plum looks good with gold, peach, yellow, spring green, taupe, copper, pink. Violet looks good with... everything. Just imagine a color like MAC Prunella, for a moment, will you, with a icy little silver. Cool. Like frost on spring violas. Or, take a celadon: now you've got a Monet painting, viewed a mess, up close. Or the heat of orange (NARS Babylon) or bronze, and you've got sunset in Arizona. Or switch a peach in, and it's a saccharine vision of girlishness. Add a grey, and you've got the absolute opposite: spare, sophisticated, and cool. Try gold, and you've got something festive and peacock-y. Just don't pair it with a blue. 0 Comment(s)    Email this post Rants, raves, and musings on all things cosmetic. Profile | Current Blog Site Feed (Atom) Previous Articles ·· Serge Lutens Sa Majesté La Rose ·· How to pick and choose your blush ·· Serge Lutens: Iris Silver Mist ·· Yar! Wishlist! (10.14.05) ·· A moment of silence... ·· What order... ·· What order do you put on makeup? ·· Serge Lutens Vetiver Oriental ·· My Holy Grails volume 2: Eyeshadow ·· Where to begin? 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