- The fishtail-eyeliner trend is the latest graphic liner look to gain popularity.
- The eye makeup trend features top and bottom eyeliner that mimics the shape of a fish.
- A celebrity makeup artist shares how to create the look and what products to use.
The 1990s beauty landscape can be summed up with brown lipstick and thin brows; the ’00s with butterfly clips and frosty eyeshadow; and the ’10s with glossy lips and black eyeliner. Although it’s still early, we’re placing our bets now that the ’20s will be remembered best for its many graphic eyeliner trends. You have favorites like banana eyeliner, bat wing eyeliner, flaating eyeliner, but allow us to introduce you to the latest: “fishtail” eyeliner.
Don’t let its strange name fool you — the fishtail-eyeliner trend isn’t about sketching a fish-like tail onto the outer corner of your eye (but if you’re into that, to each their own). Instead, it’s more abstract. “Fishtail eyeliner is a double-liner trend that makes your eye shape kind of look like a fish,” keita moore celebrity makeup artist and Maybelline New York ambassador, tells POPSUGAR. “It’s something that’s unique and unusual but very lovely.”
Though it may look tricky, the fishtail-eyeliner trend is actually a lot easier to create than most graphic eyeliner looks. When you break it down, it combines a regular wing on the top lash line and “reverse” eyeliner on the bottom. “You can achieve it by doing a top wing liner and at the wing, flick up. Then do a bottom wing liner, and flick it down,” Moore says. The two parallel strokes of liner will mimic the body and tail of a fish.
You’ll get the best results with a fine-point liquid eyeliner, like the Maybelline New York Hyper Easy Liquid Eyeliner ($9), which is Moore’s favorite, or the Stila Stay All Day Waterproof Liquid Eyeliner ($23). Don’t feel that you’re limited to only black eyeliner – you can use any shade of liquid liner that you’d like and even mix it up on the top and bottom.