I hear the latest thing Gen Z and TikTokers have declared dead is winged eyeliner – a relic best left in the past. For me this has come way too soon after denouncing the humble necklace dead –still reeling from that one. But winged eyeliner?!
Apparently, we are stuck in 2006 and TikTok is ready to drag us in to 2023 (kicking and screaming). This is the same winged eyeliner that took off in the 1950s and was resurrected by style icon, Amy Winehouse, around 2006.
But no, according to TikTok, or specifically, American pro-dancer Megan Bowen, we have been doing our winged eyeliner all wrong. Yep, another thing us, older-than-gen-Z, are failing at.
Whereas we start at the top, Bowen suggests we start at the bottom with an incredibly fine touch that seems to take an inordinate amount of time. She then creates her upward stroke ‘up and away’ from the bottom lash line instead of the top. She then begins working on the top line, with a very thin line, gradually meeting the ‘fishtail’.
In addition to taking a lot longer than my morning eyeliner, the difference is miniscule. We aren’t stuck in 2006… Gen Z are just after a watered-down version of our indie makeup. As @GrantonJasmine tweets, ‘You can take my skinny jeans and you can take my side fringe but you will NEVER take my winged eyeliner.’
This is not the life we want! We want to occasionally bump into Amy Winehouse in Camden, run to last minute Libertines gigs in strange, smelly sitting rooms and have dishevelled, heavily backcombed hair and whack on some heavy eyeliner, not stopping to worry about the angle of the wing. What’s happened to all that spontaneity?!
Expect it to be declared over by Tiktok in the next week or two.