Five years ago, if we wanted in on a celebrity beauty secret, we had to wait for a reporter to hustle it out of someone on a red carpet or beg so-and-so's glam squad to let us in on the tricks. Now we've got social media where Bella Thorne Snapchats her entire microblading procedure, Kylie Jenner gets real about her injections on her app, and an Instagram of Ariana Grande's eyeliner technique goes viral.
That said, knowing what celebrities do and whether it'll work for you (and your budget) is an entirely different story. So last year when I discovered one of Hollywood's true beauty secrets, a woman named Dominique Bossavy, my intrigue was off the charts. Her specialty is microcolor infusion—otherwise known as tattoo makeup.
Here's the thing: I've been in the beauty industry for a decade, and the one treatment I normally steer friends away from is tattoo makeup. It's not that I haven't seen great work out there—I have—but because I've seen a lot more really bad work. Think thick blue tattoo eyebrows, eyeliner that isn't even, etc. It's fairly permanent, and if it's not done well, it can be a big mistake.
But seeing Bossavy's work made me realize there really is an art to tattoo makeup. What first drew me to her is her Instagram. Like I said above, thanks to social media, it's so easy to see the results of an artists' work now. It's literally at your fingertips—and I loved every single image I swiped through. You can tell she's worked some magic on her clients, but not one of them looked like they had work done, which is exactly what I was going for. "The idea is to create an eyebrow shape that you'll forget isn't your own," she told me. Couldn't argue with that.
Second, I was into the fact that her system is all her own. From the ink she uses to the smaller tattoo needle she wields, "microcolor infusion" is a technique unique to her salon. She mixes three different-color tattoo dyes to fill in a dimensional brow shape and any sparse spots. (Important: This is not to be confused with "microblading," which is a newer form of semipermanent makeup that features a manual blade containing multiple needles. Technicians use it to create tiny hairlike strokes to make brows look thicker, as opposed to creating a brow outline.)
The downside of brow tattoos? They don't come cheap. Bossavy doesn't have set prices because each client's needs are customized, but you can imagine what A-listers will spend to always have perfectly groomed brows. Typically, though, microblading and semipermanent makeup can run anywhere between $400 and $800, depending on where you go and whether consultation fees are involved. And there's a huge upside besides the gorgeous results: The process lasts anywhere from one to three years, all customizable based on your needs.
I could go on about how much I loved my brows afterward; how fluffy and realistic-looking they were; how they've lasted well over a year. But seeing is believing, and I filmed my entire experience. Click play and prepare to be just as obsessed. If it's worth anything, I'll 1,000-percent be doing it all over again in a year.
Related Stories:
-6 Things No One Ever Told You About Eyebrow Threading
-10 Secrets Every Woman With Perfect Eyebrows Knows
-20 Eyebrow Transformations That Will Completely Mesmerize You
