Upturned eyes and the direction of the brow tail

How to see your own eye tilt before anyone draws a line

I'm Jisun, the owner of London Brow in Seoul. Eye tilt is one of the first things I look at, and it is also one of the easiest things to check at home. Take a photo straight on, in daylight, with your face relaxed and your chin level. Find the inner corner of each eye and imagine a flat line running between them. Now look at the outer corners. If they sit above that line, your eyes are upturned. If they sit on it, they are level. If they sit below, they turn down.

Most people are only slightly one way or the other, and the two eyes are often not the same, so do not expect a dramatic answer. What matters for the brow is the direction the outer corner points, because the brow tail sits right above it. When the two agree, the outer part of the face looks calm. When they disagree, something looks off even if nobody can say what. The amount of tilt varies from person to person, which is why I read it on the face and not from a category.

Following the lift instead of fighting it

Above an upturned eye, a brow tail that drops low toward the ear works against the eye. The eye is rising and the brow is falling, and the space between them narrows at the outer end, which can make the eye look squeezed. So I do not pull the tail down in search of a softer look. I let it continue in the same general direction as the outer corner of the eye, with a gentle taper, so that eye and brow read as one movement.

The opposite mistake is just as common. A strongly lifted, sharp tail above an already upturned eye produces what people call a cat eye eyebrow shape. Some people want exactly that, and it is a fair choice to discuss. But most people who message me ask for natural, and for them a tail that is lifted as much as the eye already is looks like too much of one idea. The tail follows the eye; it does not exaggerate it. The difference is small on paper and large in a photo.

How far the tail travels, and where it stops

Direction is one decision; length is another. I read the end of the tail together with the outer corner of the eye and with the hairs you already have there. If your own tail hairs continue a good way outward, the design can follow them. If they stop early, I do not carry the tail far past them, because a long tail on bare skin is the part of a brow that looks drawn first. With upturned eyes a slightly shorter tail often looks more natural, since the lift is already doing the work of lengthening the eye.

The end itself stays soft. Rather than a point, I finish with a few lighter strokes that fade in the same direction the tail is traveling. In a mirror you can check your current tail the same way: brush the hairs outward and see whether they fade out or end in a line. A line that ends abruptly above an upturned eye tends to look sharper than intended, and that is usually the first thing I would soften.

What to send and how to say it

Before you message, take the straight-on photo described above and one more with your usual brow makeup. On the bare photo, note whether your outer eye corners sit above the line between the inner corners, and whether your tail hairs fade out or stop short. On the makeup photo, look at the direction you have been drawing the tail. Many people with upturned eyes have been drawing the tail downward for years to look softer, and the result is the tension I described.

Consultations at London Brow are translation-assisted over WhatsApp, so keep it plain: 'My eyes turn up at the outer corners. I want a natural tail, not a cat eye, and I am not sure how far it should go.' In the studio, ask me to draw the tail in pencil at two lengths and look at the outer corner of the eye in the mirror each time, not at the brow. When eye and brow seem to move together, that is the version to keep.

Common questions