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January 11, 2011
Beauty Files: Chanel No. 12 brush







As you know, one of my favorite things to do is try new things. Restaurants, new types of food, trends, cities, and not limited to makeup and beauty tricks. I was recently shopping around for some new makeup and things that I had read some fabulous reviews about when I somehow ended up at the Dior counter at Nordstrom. This lovely lady decided to do my makeup for fun and as she was selling me on like 5 of their products (I may or may not have bought most of them) she also was showing me how to create a fabulous crease in my eyelids with a particular brush. She kept referring to it as a “squirrel tail” brush and she picked up a color that was pretty close to my skin tone (somewhere in the medium browns) and as I’m sitting there telling her it will probably not show up on me because only darker colors work, she is fanning this brush right in the middle of my eyelid right where my eyeball ends and then tells me to look in the mirror. HOLY COW. She had just fabricated me a deep crease that was not only visible, but was so natural looking. It totally gave the illusion of depth, which is what most often Asians are missing. Being of Asian descent (*this is not 100% certain seeing as I was adopted but I definitely have Asian-like eyes so we’ll roll with it) I don’t have the typical eye structure that most girls have. Asians have slightly flatter features in that they don’t jut out from their face quite so much and their eyes are not typically inset as far as most other girls you’ll see. Check out the images below for the difference:







Notice how on the left, this woman has a deep inset where her eyebrows are slightly over her eyes. Notice how on the right, this woman’s eyes are more of an open canvas because there is not as much depth and the area between eyes and brow is flatter.

So, to create that depth you can use a medium toned eyeshadow right where your eyeball ends* and voila, you have created the illusion of depth. (*If you’re confused about what this is, close your eyes and take your finger and trail from your lashes upward until you reach the point where the curvature of your eye stops – that’s what I’m talking about) But, without a good brush you may end up with just a funky looking line, so enter “Chanel No. 12”. This brush is seriously magical. It manages to cover my whole lid and has this uncanny ability to make a variety of colors work well in the crease. It’s the whole “squirrel tail” thing that really works. There are a variety of brushes that would be considered “squirrel tail”, but my helpful friend at Dior assured me that the Chanel one was the best one out there, hands down. Well… that must be the case because it took me 4 different Nordstrom’s, 2 Neiman Marcus’s and 1 Saks to finally find one, and she thought they were out but mysteriously found one in with the foundation. Weird.

I’m not a huge believer in brushes (mainly because it’s a pretty expensive belief to create a collection of) but I will say that this truly knocked my socks off in terms of performance. Keep it in the Chanel velvet-y pouch they give you (and clean it regularly but you should already know this because of bacteria.. eww) and I guarantee it will last you a long time.

Happy hunting & creasing!







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