

Build-a-Brow
What happens to your brows as you age—and how to make them look amazing.
When you’re a baby, your eyebrows are very subtle, adding to the lovely open faces that babies have. Just all eyes. As you get older your brows fill out, providing structure for your face. And as you age, they get thinner, either due to a history of overenthusiastic tweezing, gently greying hair or just the general hair thinning that happens with age (something that people don’t really talk about in regards to women and aging - and a topic I think should be discussed openly and with great frequency). When you’re older and your brows become less full, it adds to the general feeling of gravity to the face. The fat pads under your skin begin to travel south, creating hollows under the eyes and jowls along the jaw line and the lack of a structured brow adds to that downward effect.
So what to do…
BROW DYE
My first recommendation is a surprising one. Cheap and very effective. It's Just For Men Beard Dye. You heard me right, the Just For Men you see at the drugstore. It’s inexpensive, has the right neutral undertones and fades gradually so it’s hard to mess up. (My one very strong suggestion is to only leave the dye on for :30-:60 seconds the first time you do it until you find the timing that works best for you. Better to have them be too light versus way too dark.) By dying your brows a shade or two darker than your current color, the dye also grabs all of the fine little hair surrounding your brows, making them look instantly thicker. I recommend dying them once a month, so tie it into something you do monthly, like paying a bill. That makes it easier to remember. Or set a reminder on your phone. I'm all about reminders.
BROW PENCIL & POMADE
My other suggestion is to use a brow pencil and/or brow pen. I’m very specific about the brow pencils I’ll use. The ones from Kimiko have excellent undertones and they’re the right shape and formula for delivering fine, hair like strokes. The spoolie on the end makes brushing them into shape easy as well and the undertones on these brow pencils are on the cooler side so they don’t read too warm. Warm brows are a personal pet peeve of mine as all but redheads look better with cooler toned eyebrows. I use the Coffee shade from Kimiko on a range of brows from medium blonde to brunette and it always looks fantastic. When it comes to setting brows I love the Surratt Brow Pomade for a fluffy, full looking brow, but if you like to set your brows with a stiff gel, I reach for the Anastasia Brow Freeze Gel, the hold is bonkers.
BROW PENS
Los Angeles based brow-guru Kristie Streicher launched a line of brow pens that are top notch. The formula is on the sheer side, so it creates more of a rich shadow than a line, meaning it's more subtle and seamless than most brow pens on the market. More seamless means more believable. Heavy, blocky brows are for Disney villains, not the real world.
BROW GEL
KS&CO also makes my favorite brow gel. While most tinted brow gels are loaded with pigment - which I think makes the brow hair look chunky & matte - this product has a sheer tint, making the brows a shade darker and totally believable looking. It's also fool-proof which I always appreciate.
BROW TOOLS
Lastly, even if your brows are thinner than you’d like, you do still need to groom them. The hair texture changes, becoming more wiry, and inexplicably some grow longer than others. Insult to injury. Having an excellent pair of tweezers is mandatory - please don’t use drugstore tweezers, they simply don’t work as well - and having a good pair of brow scissors on hand will help you keep your brows, or what’s left of them, in line.
The bottom line is, things change as we age. But when armed with the right tools, information, and a little bit of time, makeup can make a world of difference. And in my opinion, good brows do a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to your appearance, so investing your time to get them ship shape is time well spent.