Dreama Walker. Get this Girl a Mascara Campaign. Stat.

Tue, 10 April 2012 10:27AM

This is Dreama Walker, best known for her roles in The Good Wife and Gossip Girl:

Don’t you have total eyelash envy?

Especially seeing as this lush display of lashness isn’t a fluke of a one-off.

Here she was last year …

… in 2010…

… and in 2009 …

I don’t yet know her secret, despite some furious googling investigating to try to find out for you. It could be extensions. Perhaps a great magic wand of a mascara (the only other girl I have met with such enviably long lashes swears by Kevin Aucoin The Mascara [Curling], $52, Mecca Cosmetica). Or simply – and annoyingly, for us – great lash genes.

Don’t be surprised to see Dreamy-lash Walker score a cosmetics campaign in the future. And, more specifically, bat those lashes to spruik some new lengthening mascara. She’d be such a dream mascara model, after all, because you wouldn’t need any of the usual tricks.

You know mascara ads are mostly trickery, right?

It always surprises me that makeup companies get into such trouble for faking the look of makeup, in particular mascara, in their advertising. Over the last few years, in the UK and US, there has been a spate of banned mascara ads because the models’ lashes were enhanced with falsies, or by Photoshop, or by both of the above.

I mean, I get it – it does bug me a bit when something is so obviously false. But at the same time, when it’s so obviously, and laughably, fake, surely no company expects that anyone will believe it to be otherwise.

I remember being at the launch of what was claimed to be the first ever curling mascara. We were shown the television commercial, in which the model’s lashes visibly lifted up into a perfect swoop, as if by magic. The whole room cracked up. We all thought it very funny, a little silly and not at all offensive. I mean, as any beauty lover knows, this is an industry of smoke and mirrors.

The thing with beauty advertising, even if you don’t call on the photoshop fairy, is that all sorts of other tricks are employed. So where do you draw the line? The fact that the model is prettier than your average girl? Or that she has better skin/lids/lips/lashes than most? Or that the photographer’s technique and lights would turn anyone into supermodel material? Or that the makeup artist hired for the shoot happens to be the best in the biz?

Makeup artists in particular create all sorts of lash and other makeup magic with their box of tools. I’ve read that, on a mascara ad shoot, they can take over an hour and more than 20 steps to perfect a model’s lashes. For example, they might:

• Prime the lashes, either with a ready-made lash primer, or by using a spoolie brush dipped into powder.
• Curl the lashes – makeup artists invariably use a Shu Uemura metal lash curler.
• Heat the lash curler (with a hairdryer switched to medium-heat) before using it – seeing as heat sets the curl.
• Send the model off to a salon to have any cow-licky lash hairs permed into place.
• Clean the mascara wand of excess gunk by squeezing it in a tissue.
• Start by digging the wand in at the roots of lashes, and wiggling it here, so that colour deposits solidly enough to intensify the lashline as much as possible, thereby making lashes instantly look lusher. Makeup artists then go back in with a cotton bud to clean up any smudges on the inner rims.
• Use a second mascara to layer on top of the first coat. For instance, a lengthening mascara, followed by a volumising one. Or, a volumising mascara, followed by one with a skinny brush, so that they can go back in and coat any individual lashes missed in the first application.
• Even use a lip brush, rubbed against a mascara wand, to paint lash hairs one by one.
• Clean up any sticky mess with a spoolie brush, and any smudges on skin with a cotton bud dipped in makeup remover.

Phew! See, so many tricks and that before we even get to the options of false lashes or Photoshop. So, next time you catch yourself wondering why your lashes don’t look like those belonging to (insert latest celebrity spokesperson’s name here) in the such-and-such ad, remember that it’s probably because even (insert latest celebrity spokesperson’s name here)’s lashes don’t really look like this.

Unless, however, said celeb is Dreama Walker. In which case, I think we all officially have reason to have lash envy.

 

What do you think, Primpettes – will dreamy Dreama be the next big beauty advertising thing?

And what about mascara ads – do you mind a bit of lash fantasy, or would you prefer the reality, even if that means stumpy, spiky lashes?

Or have you in fact found the magic wand of a mascara that indeed delivers mascara-ad lashes?

Kat x

Posted by: Katrina Lawrence

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Tags: advertising, campaigns, Dreama Walker, eyelash curler, false lashes, featured, gossip girl, Kevyn Aucoin, lash extensions, lashes, mascara, shu uemura