Carbon, the most beloved makeup shade, has never waned in popularity. But with new darker-than-dark pigments, black is better than ever By Janna Johnson O’Toole
The all-time most popular, most-applied makeup shade isn’t a classic crimson or a workaday beige. It’s black, in all its chic-to-grunge glory. Long before smoky shadow and liner were as ubiquitous on the red carpet as Ryan Seacrest, Egyptian queens Nefertiti and Cleopatra elaborately decorated their lids with a homemade glossy kohl pigment—pulverized copper, iron, or lead mixed with oil and painted on with a wood, bone, or ivory stick (the first eyeliner brush). Even the Kama Sutra features a recipe for homemade mascara (a seductive combo of lamp oil and burnt crepe-ginger leaves). “There isn’t a shade that works with every skin tone and eye color as well as black,” says Collier Strong, a L’Oréal makeup artist. “It’s the most universally flattering makeup shade—ever.”
But not all noirs are equal. Of the small handful of black pigments available for use in cosmetics, the absolute darkest shade is D&C Black #2, made from the incomplete combustion of hydrocarbon gas. Also listed as “carbon black” or “black 2” on ingredient labels, it creates the blackest of eyeliners, mascaras, and shadows because it absorbs more visible light—as quantified by a spectrometer, a device that measures light reflection—than any other pigment, explains Ni’Kita Wilson, a cosmetic chemist at New Jersey’s Englewood Labs. “Other types of black pigments may be blended with trace amounts of other shades, so they’ll still reflect certain wavelengths.” Because carbon black’s texture is so fine, it requires waxy additives to stay evenly dispersed in a formula, so developing a supersaturated shade that goes on smoothly has been a challenge: “It’s a battle in the lab to find the perfect blend of pigments to make a pencil or shadow the darkest it can be while also being nice to use. But once you get the formula right, you don’t have to layer very much to get rich color payoff,” says Wende Zomnir, founder of Urban Decay. “The shade does the work for you. The woman with the sexy, outlined dark eye—she’s the one that gets noticed across the room.” Consider yourself warned.
Three Ways to Wear It
Shiny Lids: Even with advanced formulas on the market, many pros still prefer the DIY mixology long employed by Debbie Harry types in backstage bathrooms. To create model Daria Werbowy’s liquid-look, onyx smoky eyes, De Mey, Lancôme’s artistic director, blended a black pencil with lip balm on the back of his hand “until I got the perfect intensity of noir,” then he dabbed the concoction onto lids “with a very light touch.”
Spiky Lashes: De Mey tight-lined (makeup artist speak for a microthin application of color along the lash line) Werbowy’s upper lids with black liner, then loaded them with the new Lancôme Hypnôse Doll Lashes mascara.
Winged Liner: De Mey drew a graphic Sophia Loren–inspired cat eye with precise strokes of Lancôme Artliner liquid liner. Create the shape using a gray pencil, then trace over with a slanted brush and matte black gel or liquid liner. Finish with a Q-tip dipped in Lancôme Génifique serum to clean the undereye and prep for concealer.
Fake lash extensions with Dior Diorshow Blackout mascara in Kohl Black.
A symphony of noir, Ultraflesh Black Magic kit offers five variations on onyx.
YSL Eyeliner Effet Faux Cils in Deep Black creates a rich, tight line.
For a hint of shimmer, dust lids with Lancôme Color Design eye shadow in The New Black.
Even primers are turning to the dark side: Layer Beauty Is Life Multi Black Magic on bare lids to keep smoky shadow crease-free.
