When it comes to eye makeup, my motto is minimal, minimal, minimal. (Actually, that’s typically my motto when it comes to makeup in general, but I digress.) I have hooded, downturned eyes, and unless I’m getting my makeup professionally done, I don’t typically do anything crazy or too out of the box. Sure, I’ll blend some brown eyeshadow over my lids and occasionally (if I’m really going all out), I’ll attempt a wing, but that’s basically the extent of my skills. I’m much more into contouring and adding multiple layers of blush for the perfect sun-kissed look.
However, my stance on eye makeup completely changed after I saw Victoria Beckham‘s one-product hack for creating the perfect smoky eye. I recently finished watching the “Beckham” docuseries on Netflix, and it’s completely fueled my obsession with all things Posh Spice. I’ve been scrolling her social media pages like I’m getting paid to do it, and I’ve been taking extensive notes on her outfits as well as her beauty routines. I tested out a skin treatment she’s obsessed with, I just mastered her contour routine, and now, her smoky eye tutorial has my complete and utter devotion.
“I’m going to show you how I use just one product to create my smoky eye,” Beckham says in her Instagram video. The product in question? The Victoria Beckham Satin Kajal Liner ($32) in the shade Cocoa.
Beckham starts out the video by saying one of the most important thing she does prior to using her eyeliner is to sharpen it with the proper pencil sharpener because she says it’s key for getting a precise line. My pencil was brand spanking new, so I assumed it was sharpened to within an inch of its life. I added a bit of primer to my lids and penciled in my eyebrows, and then I was ready to start following along. (Whenever I do my makeup, I always start with my eye makeup and then I move on to my base, just in case I have any fallout from eyeshadow application.)
Beckham starts by drawing a very fine line across both of her upper lash lines, starting at the center of the eye and then carefully drawing all the way out to the side, so I followed suit. I don’t often draw liner on my lids because I find that it can occasionally make my eyes look small, but if Beckham said, “jump,” I was ready to say “how high?”
“I don’t rush this part of the process because once this product dries, it is not going anywhere,” Beckham said next in the video. Hearing this made me a little nervous because I’m not great at doing my eye makeup, but I found the product to be creamy and easy to spread along my eyelid.
Next, Beckham takes the pencil and does tiny little dots in between her lower eyelashes underneath the water line. She says it was a tip a makeup artist gave her years ago that gives the illusion that the lashes are closer together. I had never tried this before, but I found that I liked the look of it. From there, it was onto the actually smoky eye. Beckham says she rubs “quite a lot of product” onto her hand, and then she takes a brush and starts to create definition in the arch of her eyelid. I followed suit, and even though she mentioned that the product wouldn’t go anywhere, I found that it was fairly easy to blend out – although I did need to do one eye at a time rather than swapping back and forth from eye to eye as I usually do when finishing my eye makeup.
For the last step, Beckham takes the other side of the pencil and using the “nice little spongy thing,” she takes the product she’s put on her hand and rubs it lightly underneath her waterline. (I think the “spongy thing” might actually be an eraser, but it does work for smudging well.) She then does a little “dip” in the center underneath her waterline to make it a bit heavier, and from there, she’s ready to go.
She notes that for nighttime looks, to make everything more intense, she’ll take some of the product and also add it to the inner lower waterline as well as the upper inner waterline, but since I’m more of a no-makeup makeup girl, I decided to skip that part. The final result? Better than I even imagined it would be. Posh Spice was right: it was super easy to create an entire eye look with just one product, and it didn’t require very much skill, which is something I am seriously lacking in the eye makeup department. I wore the look out to dinner with girlfriends, and I was happy to see that everything stayed in place, exactly where it was supposed to be, for hours on end.
Although I am fully obsessed with Beckham’s tutorial and her favorite liner, I do think the look can be achieved with other similar products. A few of my favorites are the GXVE Beauty Line It Up Eyeliner ($20) and the Caliray Surfproof Eyeliner ($20). I, for one, will be using this routine often for the foreseeable future.
Renee Rodriguez is a staff writer and social producer for PS. She writes across all verticals, but her main areas of expertise focus on fashion and beauty content with an emphasis on reviews and editor experiments. She also produces social content for POPSUGAR’s TikTok and Instagram accounts.
