How to Get the Look: 1950 Eye Makeup

One eye is made up to show what a difference eye cosmetics can make.

At the Paris couture shows for Spring 1950, models wore exaggerated eye makeup, even with daytime clothes.  Cosmetics manufacturers were quick to offer products for this previously untouched area of the average female face. Short hair had already hit the streets in the U.S. and women adopted the doe-eyed look as a seductive balance to their boyish haircuts.  In the photo above, the model is wearing eye makeup on one eye to show the difference cosmetics can make.

Here, from 1950, a step-by-step tutorial on how to get the doe-eyed look:

1.  Apply shadow on the lids from the center of the eye out concentrating color towards the temple.  A lighter shade of shadow can be blended up to the brow.
2.  Dark eye pencil is used to line the upper lid from the inside corner.  Fan the pencil out and up at the outer corner to look like an extension of the lashes.

3.  Use a dark brown (preferred over black) pencil to draw a narrow line under the lower lashes from inner corner out to meet the liner on top.
4.   Darken and shape the eyebrow with pencil.  Add mascara to balance the entire look.

The finished look topped off with a beauty mark for added allure.

Here's an eye makeup tutorial from 1960, also from Paris.