How To Embrace The Skinny Brow Trend Without Picking Up The Tweezers

If there's one turn-of-the-millennium trend we thought we'd left behind for good, it's the skinny brow. But just as the it-girls of the '90s and noughties embraced overly plucked and sparse brows — we're looking at you Gwen Stefani, Christina Aguilera, and Tyra Banks — the A-listers of today are moving toward a less-is-more approach to their eyebrows. When the likes of Bella Hadid and Cardi B are gracing the 'Gram with thin brows, you know the trend is back. The key difference? We're no longer plucking our brows to achieve the look. Instead, there's a low-commitment way to get thin, ever-trendy '90s brows. We simply create the illusion of sparseness with makeup products while maintaining our hard-earned hair growth. That way, when the trend flips back to thick and fluffy, we won't have to spend months trying to grow them in (and who hasn't been there?).

"In the 2000s, people were over-tweezing or even shaving off their eyebrows," celebrity makeup artist and beauty educator Manuel Espinoza recalls to Glam in an exclusive conversation. "Fast forward to now, people are embracing the skinny eyebrow trend by covering up their eyebrows with a glue stick and concealer to get that same effect rather than committing to shaving off their eyebrows. This is a great way to experiment with this trend without fully committing to shaving off your eyebrows, which I would never recommend!" Curious how to pull this off? Here, Espinoza walks us through the process and recommends specific products to get the job done.

The process of covering your thick brows to create a thinner look may sound advanced, but you don't need to be a professional makeup artist to pull it off. Manuel Espinoza reveals that there are just two steps to it, beginning with concealing your existing brows. "Step one: Grab a Black Radiance concealer that is similar to your skin tone and put a small amount all over your eyebrow with a flat brush," he details in an exclusive chat with Glam. While you could technically use any concealer for this purpose, Espinoza vouches for Black Radiance, in particular, because it tends not to move, which is a must for this look.

Once you've applied the concealer, you need to draw on your thin, Y2K-inspired brows over your real hairs. "Step two: Grab your Black Radiances Precision Brow Sculptor [or the Black Radiance Eye Appeal Micro Brow Pen], and you're going to do small, thin, hair-like strokes over the brow that has concealer over it," Espinoza continues. "The concealer will cover your eyebrow hair, giving the illusion that your eyebrows are skinnier than they actually are, and the brow pencil will give you the shape!"

There is the potential for error in getting the shape and thickness wrong, and drawing unnatural, semi-circled brows is a common eyebrow mistake that can really age you. So, it's a good idea to have a photo of your ideal thin brow in front of you for guidance. The beauty of this is if you make your fake brows too thick, you can simply wash them off with some micellar water and start again. You don't need to take off any hairs for this look, though trimming a few of the longer ones may make the process easier.

Trimming your eyebrows is a more permanent solution than concealing and drawing, but it's not as drastic as tweezing them out. If you do make a wrong move, you won't have to wait as long for them to grow back. But still, you'll want to tread carefully to avoid over-trimming. "The best way to trim your eyebrows is to grab a brow brush, brush your hair all the way up, and then grab little brow scissors — not regular paper scissors — and you wanna just trim the tips of your eyebrow hairs," Manuel Espinoza advises Glam in an exclusive conversation. 

If you've got particularly long or thick hairs, the easiest way to trim your brows for a clean look is to work with sections of hair before trimming. Start with the outer brow, then move to the middle, and, finally, work on the inner brow. It can also help to brush the brows downward after you've trimmed the first time to ensure you catch any long hairs you might've missed. Finally, make sure to use a regular mirror rather than a magnifying mirror for this; the latter will throw off the proportions and your perception of your brows, making hairs that are already in place seem problematic. This could lead to over-trimming.