A fundamental element for beauty, balance, style, personality and the expression of a face, they have to meet the exact requirements of shape, colour and position.
There exist different styles of eyebrows: sophisticated; casual; the style of 1915, 1920s or the 1930s. Eyebrows like Elizabeth Taylor’s so geometric and curved downwards. Like Joan Crawford’s martial like the handlebars of a black Zundapp. Like Marlene Dietrich’s that amaze us. Like Sofia Loren’s so skilfully reconstructed. Like Ava Gardner’s, naturally perfect, a sinuous and elegant arch and an unprecedented arrangement of hair. A sloping effect that is natural, is normally cancelled out by the need to epilate the arch to slim it down or raise it. And why not, eyebrows or non-eyebrows, like Mina who, with a brilliant intuition, realised that her face recalled that of a Greek mask and completely removed her eyebrows without ever reconstructing them. When I began in the profession, I immediately observed and experimented at length, until I perfected what, later, in the early 1970s, the French were to call: Stefano’s Golden Rules to my ill-concealed embarrassment.
It is critical to find the right shape of arch for your clients’ faces. Each face has its type of eyebrows, which is not invented by imagination, but characterised according to the structure of the face and the ratios between the other elements of the face. A brow arch, which is correct by thickness, position, inclination and length, is almost always decisive for the harmony of even a minimally irregular face.
The brow is always divided into three fundamental parts: the first, ascending part, the second, descending and the angle or point of height PH.
It is important to know that:
PH close together = lengthen the face
PH far apart = shortenthen the face
The PH angle has a profound influence on the balance of the volume of the face. We work on the PH to rebalance imperfections of various types, such as too wide a jaw, narrow temples, close-set eyes, an excessively short face or sagging eyelids. Spend some time examining your client’s face to establish in which of the two following groups she falls:
-Faces tending to be long (oval, lengthened, triangular)
-Faces tending to be short (round, square, triangular)
If the face is long, the top or PH of the eyebrow move be moved outwards, i.e. it will become more horizontal. If the face is short, the PH will be positioned more towards the centre of the face, and will have a vertical direction. This top point must be at an acute angle or rounded depending on whether the face is full or angular or has other characteristics.
To fix the starting point of the base of the brow arch, draw an imaginary line which goes from the sides of the nose towards the forehead, via the inner corner of the eye. To establish the limit of the tail (the final part), the imaginary line will go towards the temple this time via the outer corner.
The position of the angle, on the other hand, much more difficult to calculate, cannot be determined as you like. Top identify it, you have to stand in front of the client’s face; then identify an imaginary line which, starting from the side of the nose, touches the inner corner of the eye and reaches the hairline. From the hairline, another line starts which reaches the lobe of the ear. The point of intersection shows the position of the first part of the brow, establishes the angle. The correct application of this rule requires a certain amount of practice: however, those who have an innate sense of proportions and the ratio of volumes, can do without this system.
