Guyliner, a Tutorial

We've all had our eyes lined before---Halloween, school plays, afternoons spent curiously fiddling around at Sephora...---often to a much too harsh, unflattering effect. Though I do maintain that men look their best natural and simply groomed, I'm also all for advocating the idea of men having the freedom to change up their look from time to time the same way women have fun with cosmetics. Guyliner may not be as everyday-wearable as concealer, but on the nights you decide to break out the huge Yohji Yamamoto coat and the floor-sweeping vintage Dior Homme scarf, having a pair of dramatic, intriguingly smoldering eyes in your arsenal might just come in handy. Our mangy make-up model Mike Shaeffer returns for another installment of my little series on make-up for men.

We tried on a few shades of brown and found that YSL's pencil liner in Leather Brown, a dark brown with undertones of gray, worked best with Mike's olive-pink skin. Brown blends with skin tones much more naturally than black, which when smudged shows some hints of green.

We started by priming Mike's eyes with the Auto Pilot primer from Napoleon Perdis. This isn't an absolutely necessary step, but this pre-makeup moisturizer helps the liner smudge more evenly and stay on longer.

Apply a very small amount over the lids and under the eyes, and wait to dry.

Then with the eye pencil, draw a line from the the corner of the eye to the tear duct, as close to the lash line as possible. Draw it in with little strokes until you complete a line.

The line needn't be perfect, you'll be smudging it anyway. Mike's slightly jagged job works just fine.

Immediately after application, before the liner sets, smudge the line gently across the lower part of the lid with your ring fingertip until all visible lines are blurred. Then, with the fingertip stained with the eye pencil, smudge some color to the outer 1/3 of the lower lash line to define the eye from below. Do this with a very light touch; heavy lower liner can easily look very severe.

Soften those stares with your secretly guy-lined smoldering eyes. You are one dashing dark dandy.