If you’re after perfect eyebrows, there’s one industry legend to consult first: Anastasia Soare, founder of eponymous brand Anastasia Beverly Hills. A self-made billionaire, who emigrated to the United States from Romania in the 90s; Soare’s journey to cementing her position as an industry expert all began with one art teacher.

“Before emigrating to the United States, I studied in Romania, where I had the most incredible art teacher at school. One day, he said to me, ‘if you draw a portrait and you want to change the emotion, you change the eyebrows.’ You can make a picture look angry or surprised, just by adjusting the brows.”

“I also studied five years of technical design, so I think I was able to really understand the balance and proportions.”

From there, Soare immigrated to the United States, where she started working as an aesthetician in a salon on Melrose Place; “I thought it was the only job that I could do because it didn’t require perfect English”.

It was here that Soare started working on the faces of celebrities and she noticed that none of them were considering what to do with their eyebrows. “I started going to the library and developing a technique to shaping your eyebrows according to your bone structure and natural shape.”

Soare slowly started offering eyebrow shaping to her facial clients for free, until she eventually opened her own salon in the late 90s. Over the years, she’s gone on to build a reputation for being the authority in eyebrow shaping - so much so, she’s often referred to as ‘The Queen of Eyebrows’ – and has impressive names like Oprah Winfrey, Jennifer Lopez, Victoria Beckham and Amal Clooney among her clientele. She then went on to create an impressive line of products to help (which has now also extended into cult eyeliners, highlighters and, most recently, foundation).

So, now we’re having to go it alone with our brow maintenance, who better to ask for pointers than Soare? Get ready for some major brow schooling.

“You should shape your eyebrows according to your facial structure. Hold a pencil from the outer edge of your nose upwards to your brows. The front of your eyebrow should begin just a little bit further inwards from the pencil.

“Next, hold a pencil from the outer corner of the nose to the outer corner of your eye; this is where the end of your eyebrow should be.

“Then place it on the tip of the nose and across the middle of the eye; this should be the highest part of your brow.”

“When filling in brows, you still want it to look natural. A natural eyebrow has a lot of hair, so the light around you creates a shadow on the skin because of that hair, so you need to use two-dimensional colours. 

“For the base of the shape, use a product that is one shade lighter than your natural brows. Then, create hair-like strokes in sparse areas with a shade that is one or two shades darker than your natural brow hair. This way, you create a dimension that mimics the natural light.

“I’m not a fan of brows that look blocky and square-like at the front. The best way to approach your brows is to start from the highest point of the brow and work towards the outer end. This method is particularly useful if you’re using a gel/pomade that requires a brush. That way, most of the product goes from mid-point to ends and you can use any leftover product for the front. Just don’t ever start to fill in your eyebrows from the front.”

“Trimming is tricky. If you trim the eyebrow too much, you ruin the arch. Eyebrow hair has a curl and when you brush and cut it, it’s easy to snip it too short.

“Ideally, you should get your eyebrows trimmed by a professional aesthetician or brow artist but if you want to do it, be careful to only cut a little amount.”

“If you want to create that big, bushy brow look, an ideal product is something like my Dip Brow Gel. Take the tiny brush – which looks a bit like a mascara wand - and put any extra product onto your hand. Then, use the brush like a regular brush horizontally to colour the hair. After, go in with gel on an angled brush to create hair-like strokes.”

“I wax and I tweeze, I don’t do threading because I wasn’t trained on that. I like the precision of the other two methods and, personally, I find it less painful. But I do whatever my clients prefer. It’s not important what tools you use to remove the hair, it’s important to know what hair to remove.”

“I like to do my eyebrows last - but of course, it’s down to personal preference. For me, I do them last because then I can balance out my entire make-up look with my brows at the end.”

Main image: Getty