The Secret Magic of Dark Eyebrows and Dark Lipstick

Whenever the Los Angeles–based brow guru Kristie Streicher makes a visit to New York City, I ask the world to proverbially hold my calls while I squeeze in an appointment. Whether through the combing of a brow, the suggestion to temporarily put down the tweezers, or an entire arch overhaul, every encounter manages to defy the limits of how life-altering the face-framing powers of brows can be. That Streicher counts Kiernan Shipka, Carrie Brownstein, and Sarah Paulson as clients is proof enough—but her most recent visit to Manhattan was perhaps most emblematic of her transformational touch. After plucking a few errant hairs around my natural shape, she dyed my already fairly dark eyebrows just a little bit darker. The effect was a subtle contrast against my deep brown hair that made them—and, therefore, my eyes—pop. It could have stopped there, but it didn’t.

Streicher stepped back, her own famously feathered chestnut eyebrows furrowing as she considered my face. “Can I put some lipstick on you?” she asked, digging into her own makeup bag for her source of inspiration. “Sure,” I responded, as she twisted up a thin black tube of Temptu’s deep oxblood pigment and handed it to me. Within a swipe, the pitchy shade did for my lips and cheekbones (and miraculously, again, my eyes and eyebrows) what the tinting had done for the upper half of my features. Everything came sharply into focus but still managed to feel, in true Streicher fashion, entirely unfussy.

The fail-safe combination of dark brows and dark lipstick, she later tells me, creates structure “without [requiring you to] wear a stick of eye makeup.” The trick, she explains, is to take your eyebrows a shade or two deeper with colored gels (she recommends light or dark brunette tinted brow mousse by Blinc) or semipermanent tinting, then anchor your new arches with a lip shade that’s just as rich. Temptu’s Jet Rouge, she adds, functions as “the perfect vamp-like color” that “almost looks like a deep bluish-red” but is off-black enough to pull off. The combination makes for a “very bold and deliberate look,” she says firmly. “It must be worn with confidence.”

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