Product Review: L'Oreal Telescopic Mascara

Last February, I was asked to volunteer my time as a makeup artist for the annual Valentine's Day performances of The Vagina Monologues for VDay here in Ottawa. I had the pleasure of working with another local makeup artist, Reine G. One of the first things I noticed about her was her incredible eyelashes - they were super-long and thick and gorgeous!

Now, I'm sometimes a shy kind of gal and don't always have the guts to ask people questions about their grooming habits, so it took me a couple of days to screw up the courage to ask her what kind of mascara she uses. She was kind enough to inform me that it was L'Oreal's Telescopic Mascara.

Here's the thing with mascara. I think the formulations have all been done at this point. There's nothing new they can add to it to change it (although Cover Girl is trying with microglitter), so they are compensating with different brushes. And yeah, it sucked me in a little.

Never again!

The first couple of weeks I had it, the formula was so fluid that I had to take the applicator out of the tube when I started putting my makeup on, and about five minutes later (when I got to the point that I was ready to use it), it had congealed enough to go on smoothly*. After a couple of weeks the tube had dried out enough on it own (they do that) to avoid this step.

Despite my best efforts and light hand, I could never get this mascara to apply clump-free. It took a lot of fiddling to get my lashes to look pretty. And about midway through the day my eyes would start to itch and the mascara would start to flake and irritate my eyes. Not good.

The only good thing about this mascara was the tackiness (by which I mean stickiness) of it. Sometimes (mostly when I'm channelling Mary Tyler Moore) I like that 1960s look of very sooty lashes, which was easily achieved with this mascara. However, it's not an everyday look. At around $10.00 a tube, I'd say skip this mascara. Give me Great Lash or give me death!

Rating: 2 out of five.

*Please don't do this. It's pretty unsanitary; I would never do this on a client or recommend they try it on themselves.