Most women could probably write an ode to their favorite mascara in their sleep. The wand, the formula, the way it volumizes, curls and lengthens—tiny nuances can separate these tubes of magic from must-haves to must-throw-aways.
Even with these attributes, there’s one somewhat-hard-to-accept truth: Most mascaras are kind of similar—or at least the idea of them is. There’s a standard way you sort of expect a mascara to look; anything different just wouldn’t be mascara, and maybe that’s why we rely on it so much.
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Until now. Enter Hourglass’s new Curator Lash Instrument ($78). It definitely does not look like mascara (it’s a brushless wand that you have to wash, and I actually thought it was liquid eyeliner when I first received it), but what it does is the stuff of legends. “It’s meant to be a precision mascara that allows you to coat and separate lashes from root to tip,” celebrity makeup artist Moani Lee explains.
That all sounds great, but how is that different from every other mascara that successfully hits every lash? For starters, the applicator (the instrument) is so thin, you can use it in pretty much every direction—as in 360-degree application. As Lee says, “it can be used not only horizontally in a zig-zag motion, but also vertically to coat every single lash. The stainless steel tip is double-cut at a 40-degree angle to not only deposit the most uniform amount of product on each lash hair, but also to tightline and curl by pressing the tool gently and horizontally into the roots of the lashes.”
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The design is so beautiful, but the bottom line is that it really does hit each and every lash and creates a dramatic, defined look that gives fake lashes a run for their money. There’s a primer as well as a mascara formula (they are sold separately), but the wand also works really well when you dip it into your favorite mascara to sort of take it to the next level.
