The 1960s were famous for some spectacular and dramatic epic drama films one of which was the film version of Cleopatra made in 1963 and starring, amongst others, Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra.
It really was a film of epic proportions well worth seeing a second (or a first) time but this article is about the eye make-up used by Elizabeth Taylor which bought in the ‘Cleopatra look for eyes’.
The image at the top of this post is a still from the film from which you can see the way that her eyes have been made up to make them appear larger and more noticeable. This style of eye makeup follows closely the way that Egyptian women decorated their eyes at the time of Cleopatra and the link at ‘Love To Know’ below explains this in more detail. In the wake of the film, Cleopatra style eyes became very popular in the mid to late 1960s.
The search from Bing below is the long search page which contains a wealth of eyes and is well worth looking through for ideas (pun intended). In fact this forceful and eye-catching style of eye make-up went well with the 1960s which was, in general, characterised by the heavy use of eyeliner.
Everything, of course, comes back around again if you wait long enough and the Cleopatra look for eyes made a comeback in 2008, particularly when used by Christina Aguilera. I am sure that even today, if you want to make sure you get noticed, then it has its place.
Creating the look is easy if you have the right eye makeup and is made simpler by the number of pages on the Internet which give instructions on how to achieve the style and the wing that goes with it. I can do no better than refer you to the links below for further details.
This is a wonderful way of drawing attention both to your eyes and to your face and I believe that this heavy eye make-up is due for (yet) another comeback.
Links
Love To Know
Bing’s long image search page
Ehow Style article giving written instruction
Although written for Halloween, this Ehow Style article is also worth a read
The definitive guide from Glamour Daze (wait while page loads)
For more information use this search, made using Bing, for more links
YouTube search for Cleopatra Eye Makeup which returns a whole host of interesting and worth-seeing results
