Let’s get all the Step Back In Time jokes out of the way, because Kylie Minogue hardly seems to have aged in a decade. The singer, 56, was on red carpet duty last night in New York for the Broadway opening of Good Night, And Good Luck, but it could have been the Brit Awards 2014 – right down to the slinky black outfit and matching eye makeup. The most surprising thing about it, though? Kylie’s using a makeup product that’s so often assumed to be ageing, when in truth, it’s anything but.
Yes, we’re talking about black eyeliner: the stalwart of any sixth form makeup bag, but something that’s often jettisoned by our mature years. It’s ‘harsh’, ‘heavy’ and ‘draining’, we’re told, and we duly pack up our jet-black kohl for fear of looking like a goth having a mid-life crisis. Yet as Kylie proves, an inky eye can be sassy, modern and extremely 50-plus appropriate – with a little know-how.
To find out how to hit the right note on this one, we spoke to makeup artist Hannah Martin, who’s known as the Queen of the Smokey Eye. ‘There’s a bit of a myth around black eyeliner that, at a certain age, it’s no longer flattering,’ Hannah says. ‘But it’s all about the application and how you manipulate the black eyeliner that determines whether the finish is hard and strong, which is great when it’s done intentionally or kept soft and delicate, like Kylie’s example, which I love.’
What to read next
Black eyeliner works for Kylie in 2014 (left) and 2025 (right)
She adds: ‘What’s been done so well here is that the liner itself has been applied quite thinly, using a tight-lining technique. That means holding the lashes back and pushing black eyeliner into the lashes from underneath for definition without looking like a hard line.’ Hannah’s tutorial shows how easy and wearable this technique is.
The key to tight-lining à la Kylie is to create the definition, then soften the overall look with the rest of your eye makeup. ‘You’re adding a very fine line above and below the lash lines, and making sure it’s all blended and diffused, both top and bottom, so it’s altogether softer,’ says Hannah.
Rather than going for any sort of graphic shape or feline flick, Kylie’s liner has been blended so it merges into a minky eyeshadow tone above and below her lashes and on to her lids. ‘A minky or bronzy tone just takes the edge off the contrast between black pencil and bare flesh,’ says Hannah. ‘That bit of shimmer from the shadow is really flattering as well.’
To copy the tight-liner look, Hannah says that a good soft liner is a must (you don’t want to scratch the delicate lash line area). ‘Kajal liners lend themselves best to this kind of diffused, delicate black liner look, because their softness gives you that time to manipulate and blend,’ says Hannah. ‘Something such as Hildun Beauty or Victoria Beckham Beauty’s Kajal is easy to use, and once you’ve buffed, they set in place and they don’t move.’
Hildun Beauty Silk to Set Kajal Liner
Victoria Beckham Beauty Satin Kajal Eyeliner
And there you have it: easy, ageless and really rather sexy. Or to put it in the words of one of Kylie’s all-time greats: wow, wow, wow, wow…
