Can you believe I’ve got to the age of 36 without ever having my eyebrows threaded? If you know me and my aversion to treatments, you probably can, but as a beauty editor there’s an expectation for you to be groomed within an inch of your life.
Thanks to my teenage obsession with Tweezerman, my fear of returning to ‘sperm brow’ life, was enough to make me never touch my arches again. So, for 15+ years, I simply left them to re-wild and swerved anyone in the middle of a shopping centre with a reclining chair.
Then, last month, I got an invitation that was just too good to turn down: an opportunity to have a brow reshape at what (they will neither confirm nor deny) is Meghan Markle’s go-to London eyebrow destination.
Nails & Brows Mayfair is a Black-owned salon that I have always heard rave reviews about, so with the prospect of a whole new look in just 20 minutes, I thew caution to the wind.
Lying back in a reclining chair upholstered with floral fabric straight out of Liberty, my senior brow expert Shreyra, quickly got to work and politely nodded when I told her for the fifth time that I wanted a “natural” look.
While I have naturally dark hair, my eyebrows and lashes are surprisingly fair. However, I hadn’t realised just how many fine blonde hairs I had until Shreya started threading.
As a first time ‘thread-ee,’ I wouldn’t describe the process as pain-less, however I quickly got used to the pulling sensation and surprisingly found underneath my brows less painful than above.
Shreya asked if I wanted my brows trimmed as well as threaded. Putting her in total charge, she gently brushed up the front and trimmed a miniscule amount of length off, before tweezing any more hairs that had somehow escaped her thread.
Once my new brows were landscaped, Shreya began filling them in with a waxy pencil, explaining as she went along the shape that would most complement my face, before adding some concealer to tone down my alarmingly red skin.
As someone whose nightmare is a blocky brow, I didn’t know quite what to expect when she handed me a mirror at the end of the appointment, but I was surprisingly enamoured with my new shape.
I felt my brows still looked natural but just a little more groomed. I really liked how Shreya had refined the front, particularly with the trimming so they looked like I was born with great arches. However, the most noticeable difference was where she had taken off a few extra hairs at the tail, which were dragging my eyes down and preventing me from living my Bella Hadid fantasy.
Overall, I walked out feeling like a whole new woman; a woman who had conquered her fear of putting her brows in the hands of strangers.
I’m definitely going to maintain my new shape and start using a brow growth serum which Shreya recommended would help the sparseness I have in a certain area. However, I wouldn’t say that my new arches are life changing.
Before going in, I knew there was only so much difference I would realistically see without doing a Chrissy Teigen and getting eyebrow extensions. So, while it’s not a treatment I would have regularly, it’s definitely one I’d recommend if you’ve also been in a re-wilding era.
In the meantime, I’m going to be reaching for my all-time brow faves for model-esque arches:
Swipe and shop: Laura Capon's brow favourites
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