But what if you don't necessarily want to enhance what you have? Makeup is good both for enhancing and transforming. For instance, I can make my eyes look more blue by wearing copper, but I can make them look less blue by wearing really bright blue, which is also pretty cool. Bold cobalt eyeliner is one way to get this effect. When I use it, my eye color looks a little more blue-green or maybe aqua than it's usual ordinary greyish-blue (compare with this, for example).
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| Cobalt blue eyeliner |
I'm curious how this sort of approach might work for for other eye colors, since these are the only ones I have to experiment with. Like maybe a copper color would make warm brown eyes appear more of a cool chocolate brown? And I bet hazel-eyed people can have a lot of fun playing up or down different colors. If you have brown or green or grey, etc., eyes, have you ever deliberately tried to make your eye makeup compete with their color? What works?
I always thought matching eyeshadow to your eye color is such a bullshit idea, but that may be because the shadow palettes for all the other eye colors always seem so much prettier than the ones for brown eyes. I'm more concerned with how my eye makeup matches my ensemble in general. Also, I hate makeup color rules because most of the time, they don't even have the color theory right!
ReplyDeleteI agree. And I think there are much more important considerations, anyway, like skin tone. I guess orange or pink eyeshadow would probably make my eye color stand out more, but they also make me look like a zombie with pinkeye.
DeleteMy eye color is similar to yours and I like the way cobalt blue liner looks on me (and you). I consider those guides to be more like suggestions than law.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely. I agree. But I think since those guides pop up all over the place, some people who are trying to figure out eye makeup think they need to avoid colors that aren't the "right" ones for their eye color.
DeleteI wonder the same. I recently got to try Charlotte Tilbury's Colour Chameleon Eyeshadow Pencil in Dark Pearl for brown eyes that belongs to a friend and I would say the colour works. However CT's makeup is not available in my country so will have to keep searching for colours that make brown eyes pop. I think the undertones of our skin play a part as well.
ReplyDeleteFor sure! I think skin tone is actually more important than eye color.
DeleteI have green eyes, and the recommendation is to wear purples, which is great on some days, depending on my outfit and tan--I do think lavender looks great on my eyes and I've been pissed for like eight years since Clinique discontinued my favorite shade of all time. But most days it would be weird to wear purple eyeshadow. MAYBE liner, but again, it would depend on the other colors in my outfit. I use a lot of different colors.
ReplyDeleteBut I do see why people just newly experimenting like to have more guidelines/"rules" so it feels less overwhelming.
Plums maybe? They can look fairly neutral. But yeah, I think these are worthwhile starting points, but so long as people don't think they are the be all and end all.
DeleteYeah, I ignore the shit out of those "rules". It can be nice to know what colors create the greatest contrast with natural eye colors, but these guidelines tend to go beyond color theory and become normative standards. I love understanding how colors affect each other and interact with underlying skin tones, etc. but I don't buy into the notion that there are right and wrong ways of applying those principles (or rather, I recognize that right and wrong are subjective and/or culturally specific). Also, cobalt liner looks amazing on you.
ReplyDeleteI've got very dark brown eyes, so there's not a lot I can do to play with color. Purples and grays do tend to bring out the brownness of my eyes more than other colors, but honestly I mostly wear those colors because I like them against my skin (cool with pink undertones). I know a lot of people also like green with brown eyes, and I think that it looks great on many people, but it just isn't my style, especially since I avoid the green-yellow-orange range of the spectrum. I find that teal is as close to green as I can get without feeling like a look a little sick. So I guess purple and teal are my favorites for bringing out my eye color.
Yes, I totally agree with all this. It's weird to me that eye color is the most common point of reference. Technically, the greatest contrast with my eye color should be orange, but if I wear orange eye shadow, I look like I died of a terrible eye illness.
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