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Home • Beauty

Product Of The Week: PAT McGRATH LABS Dark Star Mascara

An ESSENCE beauty writer tells all about the mascara she uses for the pinched, Diana Ross lash trend.
Product Of The Week: PAT McGRATH LABS Dark Star Mascara
Composite by India Espy-Jones
By India Espy-Jones · Updated November 5, 2024
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In an industry where there is an overwhelming amount of product launches daily, Product Of The Week helps you cut through the noise. To help you find your new beauty and wellness favorites, this series highlights the tried-and-true products that our writers can’t live without.

Back in February, Marc Jacobs unveiled his Fall/Winter 2024 collection a full week ahead of the official NYFW calendar. Yet, one of the beauty references for his 40th anniversary show dated almost 70 years before: ‘60s lashes seen on Diana Ross and The Supremes. 

At the show, makeup artist Diane Kendal transformed 47 bouffant-wigged models into paper dolls with long, clumped lashes. The look, executed with a single line of top lash liner and false lashes caked with black nail polish, has been woven into the fabric of my imagination ever since. 

However, Marc Jacobs’s dollhouse wasn’t the first. A week before, legendary makeup dame Pat McGrath presented fashion’s most viral beauty look in history: Maison Margiela Couture’s porcelain dolls. Fast forward to this season, with both shows fixed into the perpetual time loop of my brain, I sought out a mascara to recreate the dollish looks.

With Pat McGrath the Queen of figurine beauty, I decided to try out the PAT McGRATH LABS Dark Star Mascara (also seen at Versace’s Spring/Summer 2025 show.) The volumising, panoramic mascara has a similar inky black appearance as the nail polish used at Marc Jacobs, but instead, a thick, contoured brush is used to sculpt and coat each lash. 

Using the tip of the applicator, I clump the mascara onto my false lashes then pinch  into defined sections to create a webbed definition. Even on Diana Kendal’s layered lash technique, the mascara can withstand triple-layered lashes (think: Twiggy’s top lashes) which are often referenced in the pinched lash look.

TOPICS:  Pat McGrath Labs Pat McGrath Labs Dark Star Mascara Product Of The Week