Why Brow Gels Have Taken Over the Eyebrow Market
Blame Cara, blame Instagram, blame #OnFleek (ugh), but eyebrows are the one part of our beauty routines that many of us will never, ever skip. Products promising to darken, enhance, and thicken brows have dominated sales growth, with a 28 percent increase last year alone. But recently we’ve noticed that our beloved brow kits, pencils, and powders have been usurped by a new product: gels.
Typically we’re told we need small, precise strokes to get the brow look we crave, so it’s hard to fathom that a thick gel applied with a spoolie will get us lush brows.
Well, the secret is actually in that spoolie. Typically, brushing up your brows is an added step in your grooming routine, but gels eliminate that step—the brush is required to apply the product. Maybelline’s Brow Drama ($7.99), released earlier this year, has an extremely round brush head so that you’ll apply it with angled, upward strokes.
Dong Gong Minn Brow Maker ($22), a Korean gel, has a felt-tip as well as a spoolie brush so you can use the brush to fill in your brows and then go over any sparse areas with the felt-tip.
If that weren’t cool enough, some brands have taken the gel technology even further by enhancing their formulas—something that’s tough to do when it’s just a powder or a pencil. Benefit Cosmetics offers a Gimme Brow Volumizing Fiber Gel ($24) that actually sticks to sparse hairs and skin to make your brows appear fuller than they actually are. L’Oreal Paris also developed a fiber-enhanced gel, Brow Stylist Plumper ($7.64).
And finally, since the end goal is the lushest brows possible, a few companies have even incorporated growth technology products into brow gels, like Lashfood’s new Browfood ($24), which both tints and enhances growth—a win win.
