Even if you haven’t heard of Anastasia Soare, you’ve likely been unwittingly influenced by her. The CEO and founder of Anastasia Beverly Hills has led brow trends for decades and continues to do so in the digital age. This year the brand celebrated its 25th year with a star-studded dinner attended by Soare’s supporters, including Kim Kardashian, Jennifer Lopez, Oprah, Sofia Vergara, Heidi Klum and many more.
The most surprising thing about this journey for Soare was how long it took her to convince the world of the importance of eyebrows. In the 90s, she felt it was obvious that fuller brows were complementary to the face, but most people preferred to over-tweeze due to trends at the time. Luckily, Soare says everyone finally knows they don’t need to touch their eyebrows. The thicker, the better. We caught up with the brilliant mind behind Anastasia to chat about the past 25 years and what’s to come.
I don’t need to tell you, but you’ve really defined the brow movement over the past decade. What sparked your passion for brows?
“When I started doing facials and body waxing in the early 90s, I was kind of surprised that nobody paid attention to eyebrows. In Romania, before I got my facials, they would tweeze my eyebrows. At the same time, I realized that in all the pictures I was looking through when I was in Romania, I looked really surprised because the fashion was penciled in and very round brows. So I remembered my art teacher always said, ‘if you want to draw a portrait and you want to express an emotion you change the eyebrows.’ He introduced me to the theory Leonardo da Vinci used in all his paintings—the golden ratio. It’s so important when you draw a face to create the perfect balance in proportion, and eyebrows are one of the most important features on our face because it expresses an emotion and creates balance in proportion.
So I started going to the library to look at those theories, and I wanted to fix my own eyebrows. I fixed my eyebrows, and all my clients looked at me and asked, ‘Wow, did you change your hair color? Did you change your haircut? Because you look different? It’s like you look rested. There’s something different about you.’ Of course, I told them about the eyebrows, and I started, before their facials, to shape their eyebrows, and it slowly became like the best-kept secret in Hollywood. Then everybody started coming in repeatedly every three weeks, and there were no products for eyebrows, so I created the brow product.”
Where do you see brow trends going?
“Right now, with technology and social media, I think people can learn to create very natural, thick, beautiful eyebrows versus in the ’90s when they were thin. If you remember, at the beginning of social media, everybody used to create those boxy, thick eyebrows. Now you start looking at social media, and you see that it’s more natural, a little thicker. Creating thicker, beautiful eyebrows, I think, is the trend.”
As long as we never go back to skinny brows!
“Everybody would come in in the early ’90s like, ‘I want Pamela Anderson eyebrows’ because she was such a huge celebrity. I used to say, ‘no no, please don’t tweeze. It doesn’t work. It’s not the golden ratio.’ So I used to fight every client to shape and keep their eyebrows thick because everybody wanted thin eyebrows then.
Look, there are so many techniques right now that you could use to create a skinny eyebrow look for a photo shoot or something with makeup. There are so many products that are offered to create whatever you want, but don’t remove your eyebrow hair.”
What are some of the most beloved products among your celebrity clientele?
“Of course, they love the Brow Wiz ($25), they love the Brow Definer and the Brow Freeze ($23). When I started developing the products, I didn’t have anything to get inspired by, so I started developing products based on the needs of a client. I considered what problems the client had. If she had oily skin and thin eyebrows that were very curly with a lot of space, then I developed a product for that. So it depends on their eyebrows and skin tone and type.”
Do you have any makeup trend predictions for this year?
“I think everybody learned that less is more and how to blend and understand your bone structure and where you have to apply the lighter colors and darker colors. Our whole brand is based on the golden ratio applied to the face to create the perfect eyebrow shape. I think people started learning much more, and they’re able to master using products.
I remember in the ’90s, I used to ask people, ‘why do you use makeup?’ Nobody could give me an answer. Everybody was like, ‘well I saw my mother wear it,’ or ‘I went to a makeup artist, and he did my makeup.’ The key to why we use makeup is to create that perfect balance and proportion using dark colors and light colors and blend them to enhance our features.”
Do you have any makeup tips you’ve learned over the years?
“The key to becoming good at makeup is just to try the products. I always advise my clients to take 20 minutes of their day off and play with the products. You don’t want to buy a product and use it before you go to a party because if you don’t use it well, then that’s no good. You have to learn, to touch, to get the feel of how it is, and that’s the best way to become very good. Practice is very important.”
