The Great Eyeliner Hunt I- An Ode to the Discontinued

Following the steps of The Great Mascara Hunt, Blogger Jilbean has started a similar quest for eyeliner and has invited me to participate. This should be fun and produce many reviwes. I'm willing to bet that I'm not the only one around here who finds the liner to be the most essential item in her arsenal (and has about 20 different ones at any given point).

Eyeliner was the first makeup product that I ever wore. Even before lip color. Probably because my mother never liked lipstick and had none, while a black pencil liner was always present. For some reason. the girls in my class belonged to the school of thought that promoted using said black liner on the inside of the lower lashes. The eighties for us were, apparently, all about scary raccoon eyes.

Liquid liner, the kind you apply with a thin brush was very "out" and remained so until around 1988 where the first precise eyeliners that came in the form of a felt-tip pen took the market by storm (and are still here with us. Who doesn't own at least one Lancome Artliner?). My first one was a black Helena Rubenstein (I hear that you can stil buy them in Europe and Asia, sadly the brand is no longer available here in the US). While I've never (to this day) managed to gain the skill of applying a regular liquid liner, those pen-like applicators were easy to use, and even I learned to draw a nice, even line. I was no longer defining my lower lashes, but black was still the only color I used.

Then came 1990 and I discovered colors and subtlety. My first ever trip to the Clinique counter has resulted in discovering brown. I got the Charcoal Brown eyeshading pencil, that despite its name was much more of an eyeliner than a shadowing pencil, being thin, not very smudgy, it stayed put for hours, never bled and was suitable for drawing thin lines. This was my staple and no-effort liner for years. Still is, actually, but to my dismay, the whole line (not just the color) has been discontinued. You can still find it on ebay here and there, and for a hefty price. Apparently, I'm not the only one who thinks that this was a perfect color.

It was brown, but a cool one, not warm, because of the charcoal element. It was perfect with my skin tone. Dark or deep and rich browns are good on me, as are greys- charcoal, silver, smoke and slate. But this color that combined the best of both groups looked perfect and blended well with almost any other eye makeup I used.

Part of my Great Hunt will be about finding a suitable replacement.

My Adventure at the Chanel Counter

‘Tis the season for new makeup, new looks and the general renewal. Combine that with my sister’s upcoming wedding and you see why I was heading to the Chanel counter at Saks. Well, my formal excuse was that I was running out of my beloved Vitalumier foundation (in beige. I’ve never had a foundation that matched my skin tone so well). Also, I’ve come to realize that the dark under eye circles have won permanent residency on my face and are about to apply for citizenship, so with a special occasion looming ahead there might be a need for a good concealer.

The Chanel lady insisted that I try a stick concealer. I’m not a fan of those, because they are just too heavy for my under eye area. But I relented. It was awful. Even the warmest beige turned ash grey on my skin (that’s what green undertones would do to you) and it was cakey and pasty, setting into the skin in a way that aged me 20 years, and not in a graceful way. The thin barely-there crow feet became instant wrinkles.

A quick clean up and my friendly (but tired and not very interested) Chanel lady has produced the liquid stuff. Medium beige, and this time it was the right color, right texture, just a dab erased the green and I was happy enough to start playing with the new eye shadow palette- Goldrush.



I’m usually a bit skeptic about shadows so light- too often they don’t have enough pigment in them to actually show. But these were great. I can use the gold and bronze for evening and the shimmery pink and beige for day. It’s the kind of pretty that makes you happy.


While the helpful lady was at the back I checked the Glossimer and nail polish. The nail colors were not for me- one too coraly and the other one too shimmery. I did get the Glossimer in Summer Plum. It only adds a hint of color to my naturally dark lips, but again with the pretty.

Then came the disappointment- they were out of the concealer. Unfazed, I paid for my other products and went across the mall to Bloomie’s, where I’ve learned that Chanel have actually discontinued their liquid concealer. You can still find it at a few stores and online retailers, but the formal Chanel retailers (like gloss.com and others only offer it in one color- roselight, which I suspect that is very wrong for me. I ended up getting my medium beige from beutifulperfume.com. It’s the first time I’ve bought something from them, so I opted to pay with PayPal. We’ll see how it goes.

That was my Chanel adventure. It reminded me why I don’t like cosmetic counters, but sometimes they are necessary evil, since my local Sephora (and the other one I frequent more, near my husband’s Union Square office) don’t carry Chanel, so I can’t experiment on my own.

And on a side note, the big online stores need to improve the way colors and textures are displayed. What you find at Chanel’s is so 1999. Lancôme’s web site is way better in this regard.