3 ways you can wear Korean eyeliner to work

3 ways you can wear Korean eyeliner to work

Trend alert: Pastel peepers are still as perfectly pretty and "ulzzang" as ever - and for the uninitiated, ulzzang is Kool Korean kid's street slang for Insta-popular bloggers with the "best face".

At first blush, a pale palette may seem like an obvious choice for the eyes - baby blues and powder pinks are so fun, flirty and feminine. Nope. There are some crucial caveats to KIV if you want to avoid looking clownish.

For one, if you know you're going to be pulling an office all-nighter, give pink pigments the pink slip - all that red around the eyes is only going to draw attention to tired, bloodshot eyes. Second, it would be prudent to steer clear of shimmery shades, as frosty formulas will only serve to amplify puffiness around the lids.

Quick recap: No pearlescent pastels if you have puffy peepers. Got that? Good. Time to marshall your makeup tools. For this purpose, it's best to gun for creamy pencils in a solid shade. What to try, what to buy? Glad you asked. Set aside a beauty budget for Shu Uemura's soon to be unleashed "Kool Kollab" with super stylin' Seoul designer Kathleen Kye (available from April 14 at Sephora Ion and from May at all Shu Uemura counters), which the Japanese beauty brand's amusingly alliterative copywriters have taken to calling "Kye-Beauty". The quartet of #LimitedEdition liners from the collection is covetable beyond belief - I'm especially enamoured with the deliciously delectable Drawing Pencil in ME Pink 12, $33. Enough gushing; on to application proper:

1. Run the tip of your eyeliner pencil across your lids, keeping it very close to your upper lash line. You may leave it as is for a retro-modern colour blocking effect, but a more "palette-able" way of wearing bright liner is to layer on an eyeshadow palette with a combination of complementary neutrals - I'm gaga for the gorgeous Gwen Stefani Eyeshadow Palette ($85) from Urban Decay - as this delicate diffusion of colour creates a soft wash that's very Korean (and office-friendly!) indeed.

2. Simply sweep an eggshell or fawn hue from your eyeshadow palette onto your upper lids, tracing over the line created using your matte pastel pencil.

3. Next, swirl your brush with a darker chocolate and blend into the socket; this rich russet base will add complexity and dimension to your pop of pink. For a festive flourish, pat in a sparkly silver accent on the V-shaped inner corners.

All that colour around the eyes may leave your features looking top-heavy. Balance out your look by perfecting the planes of your face with an illuminating powder. Texture-wise, I like juxtaposing matte pastel liners with a satiny blusher - just remember to keep the colour within the V-shaped wedge between your temples and the highest plane of your cheekbones, and avoid bringing the blush too close to your nose.

And you're done. Now, go out and paint the town (and your office) pink and pastel!

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