A New Mascara Just Launched at Dior Fall 2017—And It's Really Freakin' Cool
By Sophia Panych. Photos: Courtesy of Brand.
I've seen mascaras that bend, mascaras that vibrate, and mascaras that morph from one wand to another with the twist of the cap. But today, Dior just debuted a new mascara that squeezes backstage at Christian Dior's fall 2017 runway show, and the reason it squeezes may not be what you initially thought.
Anyone who's ever owned a tube of mascara knows the deal. You find one you love, you use it every day, and then after a couple months, the formula that was once glossy and flexible turns stiff and clumpy and you have to throw it, knowing there's plenty of mascara still left at the bottom of the tube. It's infuriating, and it happens to professional makeup artists, too. "When this happened to my mother, she'd put her tube of mascara in a cup of warm water to loosen it up, which is something I still do today," said makeup artist and Dior Makeup's creative director, Peter Philips, backstage at the show. "It's similar to what I have to do on long photoshoots when the model's lashes start to droop, I'll use my heated eyelash curler from Japan to make the mascara on her lashes moist again, allowing me to add more on top."
And it was this exact beauty troubleshooting that set off the proverbial lightbulb in Philips' head. How could you add very low heat to a mascara tube to keep the formula moister for longer? The answer, a soft-touch, squeezable tube. The top of Dior's new Pump 'N' Volume Mascara is like any other mascara you own with a twist-off, plastic cap. But the bottom half of the tube features two rubbery indents that you can squeeze between your fingers. "That way, it uses your own body heat to warm up the mascara," explained Philips. It's actually really fun, and may make you think of that scene with Dori in Finding Nemo ("I shall call you squishy, and you will be my squishy"..alright, maybe that's just me).
As for the actual formula of Dior's new mascara, it's pretty awesome as well. "One coat and you get very full lashes," said Philips. "Multiple coats of it and it looks like you're wearing false lashes." For the show, Philips only used a tiniest bit of the Pump 'N' Volume Mascara , painting it on just the center lashes, top and bottom, and then smudging the pigment along lash line with an cotton bud or angled liner brush to make it look like the model had maybe worn her makeup to bed the night before (albeit in a very beautiful, sophisticated, Dior sort of way—this is definitely not how I look after a night of sleeping in my mascara).
While Philips debuted a brand spankin' new piece of makeup backstage at Dior, hairstylist Guido employed a very old-fashioned way of setting the hair: rag rollers. Okay, in this case he was using paper towels, but it's the exact same method of twisting sections of hair and wrapping them around pieces of fabric, heating them with either a blast of the blow-dryer or clamping down on them with a flatiron, letting them cool down, and then pulling them out.
"Doing it this way gives the hair a much softer feeling and more volume than if we were to set it with a curling iron," said Guido, which was important because every model wore a black leather beret for the show. "The beret feels very revolutionary and provocative, so I wanted to keep the hair very soft and floaty and very easy, so you have this balance of tough and pretty in one look." This also meant Guido used as little product as possible, simply washing the models' hair with Redken Diamond Oil Shampoo (something he's done a lot this season) and blasting it with a bit of Redken Windblown Volumizing & Texturizing Dry Hair Spray before starting on the "tissue set."
So it was a mix of innovative technology and vintage techniques backstage today. In terms of the former, Dior's new Pump 'N' Volume Mascara will be available on Sephora.com for a one day "flash sale" on April 2nd and will launch officially at Sephora on April 15th. As for the latter, you can pick up paper towels by simply heading to your kitchen.
This story originally appeared on Allure.
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