beauty
For Stylist’s beauty director Hanna Ibraheem, eyeliner is a way to reconnect to her ancestral roots. Here she explains everything she’s learnt about the art of applying the perfect flick
PHOTOGRAPHY: Harry Pedersen
Despite being squeamish about things going near my eye, I brace myself because it’s totally worth it. “Sit here,” my mum instructs, pointing to a chair. Donning a Lakmé jumbo kajal crayon we bought from an Indian shop in Southall, she leans in and swipes it along my lower waterline in one swoop. I examine myself in the mirror: my bottom waterline is now coloured in deep, rich black pigment and I’m immediately filled with joy. It’s 2004 and aged 13, I’m enjoying my first foray into make-up. Growing up, I struggled to connect with my cultural roots. My mother, half-Indian and half-Yemeni, and my father, Pakistani, met when they had already immigrated to the UK. I was born and raised here and over the years, I, and . Alongside the emotional (sometimes incredibly farfetched) storylines and musical sing-alongs, I was enamoured by the make-up. At the time, there was a strict ‘no kissing’ policy in Bollywood movies so, instead, actors intensified their eyes in rings of kajal, using it as an underlying narrative to communicate romance through smouldering looks and playful glances. Just watching actor Kajol dance around pyramids in smash-hit left me hypnotised, and was the inspiration behind my graduation eye make-up. As I got older and flexed my make-up muscles beyond a simple slick of kajal, I began to really experiment with how I wore it. I dragged kajal eyeliners along my lash line and sketched out wings towards my temples. I trialled different colours, practised graphic shapes and learned about all the different styles, smudging, flicking and smoking out. Fast forward 21 years and many more pencil shavings later, I’ve become a self-appointed expert in eyeliner (over 10 years as a beauty journalist have helped too).
