A long time back I wrote a bit about hooded eyes. Now I have some fresh ideas that I want to share:
A hooded eye is not just little space on the moveable lid. It means that the unmovable lid looks pillowy -- however this is often not very obvious, especially on younger people. The more clear sign of the hooded eye is that the crease is longer than average, it extends to the outer corner of the eyes. This makes applying regular eyeliner impossible -- if you draw it on with your eyes closed, it will look very strange when you open your eyes (and vice versa). (I'm not going to talk about east Asian and monolid eyes here, because this is a whole big topic I'm absolutely not qualified for.)
Before I delve into actual makeup, I want to say that I always find it a pity when people approach hooded eyes as something that needs to be fixed. I find this eye feature is very charming, it is a very specific look and has not been called "bedroom eyes" in vain. A lot, and I mean really a lot of gorgeous famous women have hooded eyes -- from actresses to supermodels to singers.
I found it a pity that Renee Zellweger got work done that took away this distinctive feature of hers. I mean she is a beautiful woman and looks great still, but she looks so, I dunno, rather generic Caucasian now. Not to mention that her original eye shape that she felt the need to fix is due to her Kven and Sami heritage, which is another conversation all together.
Ok, off my soapbox and back to makeup.
Many hooded eye makeup tutorials will tell you to apply a dark, matte shade on the unmoveable eyelid to make it recede. This is the standard "corrective" makeup for the hooded eye:
Wayne Goss has an improved technique for this, which makes sure that the eyes don't look droopy and that the socket doesn't get emphasized:
One great tip with hooded eyes is to use an eyelash curler, it is a very easy way to open up the eye area. Some people like to use false lashes, but I feel it can easily look dated and often overpowers the eyes. (Samira is gorgeous, but here you see the lashes before you see her eyes. Compare this to her photo lower down):
However if you look up celebs with hooded eyes, most of them don't follow that advice at all. Most don't try to minimise their eye hood. In fact they actually wear the exact opposite of what is recommended -- light, shimmery shadow on the unmoveable lid:
It also looks really beautiful when they just ignore the brow bone and socket, and apply darker shadow on the moveable lid and on the lower lid:
But lets move on to eyeliner. Like I said, regular winged eyeliner is just not do able for most hooded eyes. However there are a couple of ways you can outwit that pesky crease:
Some eye shapes can wear a very low eyeliner tail, where the flick is so low that it avoids the crease:
Then there is the little cheat corner liner, just a simple little flick:
And then finally here is the bat wing liner from makeup artist Katie Hughes. It looks like regular liner from the front, but reveals a cute bat wing when you blink. I feel like this look can range from edgy to ornate, depending on the rest of the look, and it's never boring.
