Why I Love Essence Gel Eyeliner: A Manifesto

My go-to look has unexpectedly become the cat-eye. I never thought I could do it, but practice does indeed make...well, not perfect, but something more akin to an evolving technique. I used to lay it on a little thick with pencil, until I finally found my medium. Gels and I gel, you know? Anything in a pot, anything I can dip a brush into, I'm all over it. And I have tried some gels in my time. Some get patchy, some get smudgy, some slip-n-slide right off my eye. If I can get my hands on it, I'll try it. But at the end of the day (or rather my beginning. Who puts on makeup before bed? Don't answer that) I always end up reaching for Essence's Gel Eyeliner.



Maybe it's because it's inexpensive, and so I don't expect too much of it. Maybe it's because it comes from my Mother's motherland of Germany. Maybe it's the inky black, the frosty taupe, the funky purple, and the intense pigmentation in each one of those little glass pots.

Top to bottom: Midnight in Paris, Berlin Rocks, and London Baby. I could not keep the golden shimmer in London Baby out of this photo, but isn't it magnificent?

I don't know what it is, but it's love. Essence glides on smooooth. If I have to go over a line to fix it, it doesn't pick the pigment back up and give me any bald spots. With primer, I can get it to last for at least 12 hours before my oily lids take over, and even then I can salvage it with a little creative powdering. In fact, here is a tiny picture of my eyes as I write this. I applied my black Essence eyeliner at 5 this morning, and here I am at 7pm:

While we're on tiny pictures of my eyes, here's a quick smokey eye I whipped up with London Baby- the taupe- as the base. This sucker did not budge:

Quick! What constellation does that vein look like?

My only gripe is that sometimes it takes a little long to dry down. I've adjusted my technique to where I apply a little at a time and build up the line across my lids though, and that helps a lot, along with applying a finishing powder immediately after. Once these dry, they stick around, so if I need to fix it, I have to go back in with a q-tip and some makeup remover to remove it and start again.

It sits next to some far more expensive eyeliners in my drawer, and they end up being the wallflowers to these guys. And for under $4 a pop, what's not to love?

The nitty-gritty: If you're an eyeliner pro, you have to try this. Seriously, you were going to spend $3.50 on something better? If you are considering eyeliner, get this to play around with. If you end up having to wipe it all off and start from scratch 5 times (been there), still not a lot of money down the drain. Trust me on this.