I was 12 when I first plucked my eyebrows. Inspired by Kate Moss’s arched brows, I took to my own rather bushy pair with tweezers and marvelled at the instant transformation.
Plucking (and plucking and plucking) my brows became a theme of my adolescence. The shape would change every few years, but the daily removal of hairs was a constant. That is until suddenly everyone wanted the fluffy brows that nature had bestowed upon me and which I had wantonly removed year after year.
In a bid to get mine back, I started to use products to stimulate growth and found Rapidbrow serum, £37 to be the best. After a few years of using it on and off, my brows regained their original shape, but they were sparser, with little patches that I had to accept would never sprout hairs again.
On most days, I’m happy to brush them up with a brow gel and leave them as they are, but when I want to look more groomed and pulled together, I like to fake hairs in the little bald patches.
Enter the quest to find a brow product that doesn’t look like I’ve gone mad with a Sharpie.
I tried everything I could get my hands on and found quite a few hair-mimicking products that worked well. Anastasia Beverly Hills Dipbrow Pomade, £19 is excellent but requires a brush so I tend to avoid travelling with it. Suqqu Balancing Eyebrow, £39 is a stellar powder, but again the brush means that it isn’t easy to just fling in your handbag, and the Suqqu Framing Eyebrow Liquid Pen, £22 is a firm favourite that I’ve directed people to buy for years both because it’s subtle and because it is waterproof so ideal if you’re filling in large areas and don’t want them to run in heat or if exercising.
That said, the Suqqu pen is fairly pricey at £22, so when Glossier announced they were releasing a microfine pen for brows for £15, my hopes were high.