This turbocharged volumising mascara is va-va-voom in a tube

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I don’t often go out and investigate things because I’ve seen them on a person in real life, but I couldn’t help noticing over the holidays that a friend who was staying with me appeared to have had fairly dramatic eyelash extensions. This didn’t seem very likely — my friend is the definition of low maintenance — and then one morning my daughter appeared pointing at her own eyelashes delightedly and saying: “Look at my lashes!”

She’d borrowed this friend’s mascara (bad idea, eye bacteria, don’t do this) and her lashes did indeed look spectacular. The mascara is the newish Charlotte Tilbury one, called Exagger-Eyes Volume Mascara (£28, charlottetilbury.com).

So then my daughter and I were in Norwich (which has an excellent pasta restaurant called Yard, please note — it’s as good as Padella in London) and we went to the CT stand in the beloved Jarrolds department store. The mascara is insane. It gives you bonkers lashes, even if you don’t have much to work with in the first place. If you have loads of long, thick lashes it may be too much for you — on already thick lashes the effect it gives is sort of at the intersection between make-up and drag. Mind you, that’s a look people seem to quite like. But if that sounds in the slightest bit off-putting, the mascara also comes as a mini, so maybe try that first.

For everyone not naturally blessed in the lash department, though, Exagger-Eyes is amazing. I barely recognised my own eyes. What I would say is that it gives so much long, thick, curled lash that you might want to ease up on the rest of your eye make-up — or at least that’s what I do. I don’t think this is the concept; the idea is presumably more of everything until you look superglam and fully “Tilburised” and, obviously, if that’s the look you’re going for then this mascara is the dream. But — and this is so subjective — I never like looking too done, so what I prefer doing with these high-glamour things is to wear one product in relative isolation. It gives you a completely different look, like you have been blessed by nature rather than blessed by the magic of make-up artistry. Well, nature-ish; nature on steroids.

The other thing is that it doesn’t budge. It doesn’t clump when it goes on, it doesn’t flake, it doesn’t smudge, it doesn’t migrate, and it stays on for ever (they say a very specific 28 hours, a claim I haven’t tested because I like going to bed). They also say it gives nine times the volume of your existing lashes (and twice the curl), which, again, is hard to test but which I am inclined to believe given the dramatic results. It gives sort of 1960s lashes, quite spidery and huge. I like the curved brush too — the bristles are soft on one side and harder on the other, meaning that it’s quite easy to get a separated and defined effect. I would put this mascara on more carefully than if it was your normal mascara, and I wouldn’t do, say, three coats on autopilot. Apply it with care, using both sides of the brush, and then step back before carrying on. Va-va-voom in a tube.

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