Way back during those swank ancient-Egyptian times, when women like Cleopatra bathed in vats of rose oil whilst being fanned by shirtless men, everyone (ladies and dudes alike) rimmed their eyes with black kohl liner. It wasn’t so much a beauty statement as it was a safety measure to protect their eyes from the sun’s glaring rays. While the Egyptian guyliner look faded away, women continued to emphasize their eyes with pencil liners until about the sixties when the liquid version was invented. Soon, women everywhere were deftly drawing graphic black lines on their upper lash lines, finishing with a little flick at the end to create the “cat eye” look made famous by the likes of Elizabeth Taylor and Audrey Hepburn.
Over the course of a few weeks, I set out to test eleven liners and scrutinized qualities like firmness of point, flow of ink, and the ability to stay smudge-free, to see which one would come out on top. No one wants a splat of inky black above their eyes! Click through the slideshow to see which liquid liner is easiest to use and will last all day.