The goop Guide to the Best Brow Artists
Beautifully groomed brows can really change the way you look, accentuating your bone structure and playing up your best features—you may even find you need less concealer after a great brow shaping. Here, a cross-country guide to our favorite experts in the field—plus their tips for shaping, tweezing, trimming, and taking care of your brows, whether at home or in a salon.
New York
The Expert: Jimena Garcia
Known For: Super flattering near-perfect arches and organic-vegetable-dye-based brow tinting.
Where to Find Her: Garcia works in Manhattan out of Chanel’s SoHo atelier and her own studio in SoHo, as well as in Paris and LA (at the gorgeous Proper Hotel in Santa Monica). She also does brilliant virtual appointments.
Best Tips
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“Exfoliate, massage, and condition, just the way you would your skin,” says Garcia. “Exfoliating your brows helps stimulate hair growth and slough away dry and dead skin, creating a smoother, more receptive canvas to apply creams, oils, or makeup—and it helps with ingrowns.”
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“Use your fingers or a gua sha stone, along with a little face oil, to massage your brows to keep them soft, silky, and abundant-looking.”
The Expert: Josh Beeler
Known For: Custom brow tinting and a signature treatment called the Multeye: a brow wax, a tint, and a few strategically placed microblading strokes throughout your brows, plus a lash line enhancement (where he adds semipermanent ink to the spaces between the lash follicles), for full, lush-looking brows and lashes.
Where to Find Him: Previously at SHEN Beauty in Brooklyn, New York, Beeler is taking clients on his own (book HERE).
Best Tips
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“Be consistent with brow appointments or at-home brow-grooming sessions,” says Beeler. “Your regrowth cycle will start to sync up after about three months, and once that happens, maintenance gets easier.”
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Beeler uses a brow pencil and brow gel together for the fullest-looking brows: “A pencil draws realistic brow hairs—it’s the easiest and most natural-looking way to fill in sparse areas. Then the gel grooms brows into shape.”
The Expert: Delphine Breyne
Known For: Restorative microblading. Rather than addressing the full brow with microblading, Breyne uses a special technique where she places a few detailed strokes throughout, which leaves brows with a look that is natural and ultraflattering.
Where to Find Her: The chic Paris-inspired Delphine Eyebrow Couture on the Upper East Side.
Best Tip
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“Understand what brow shape works for your unique facial shape,” says Breyne. “A style you think looks good on your friend or a celebrity may not be what’s best for your bone structure. Work with your brow technician to find the most flattering shape for you, and keep in mind how much maintenance you’re willing to commit to.”
The Expert: Azi Sacks
Known For: Thick, fluffy brows shaped by tweezing and trimming and tinted with an all-natural organic brow tint.
Where to Find Her: Dubbed the “brow architect,” Sacks has a solo studio in Chelsea with a waiting list of over 1,000 people, but follow her here—she occasionally holds pop-ups where you can see her sooner.
Best Tips
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“If you have those pesky little blonde hairs around your brows, leave them,” says Sacks. “I tint those little hairs and build them into the brow, making it appear fuller and thicker.”
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“If you must tweeze your brows, furrow your brow and tweeze only where the skin puckers right at the bridge of your nose,” says Sacks. “A fluffier brow better frames your eyes and face.”
Los Angeles
The Expert: Kristie Streicher
Known For: The trademarked Feathered Brow and the Brow Lift (the latter is a two-step keratin treatment). She can also transform overplucked arches with a unique brow-training program (clients show up to the first appointment with six to eight weeks’ worth of untouched brow growth to start).
Where to Find Her: Striiike Salon in Beverly Hills, a full-service hair, makeup, and brow studio that Streicher co-owns with her two sisters, Ashley and Jenn.
Best Tip
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“Avoid too-frequent tweezing and overtweezing,” Streicher says. “Tweeze in natural daylight while looking into a regular (nonmagnified) mirror and fill in your desired shape with a pencil first, then tweeze away any hairs that fall outside that shape. After tweezing a few hairs, step back from the mirror periodically to gain perspective and prevent overtweezing.”
This kit contains scissors and tweezers of the highest quality (it makes a difference), and the spooley brush Streicher has been using for over 20 years to shape clients’ brows.
The Expert: Kelley Baker
Known For: Incredible waxing, trimming, and tweezing skills that leave brows beautifully polished. Her signature not-a-hair-out-of-place shape is precise and intentional but natural-looking.
Where to Find Her: Kelley Baker Brows in Venice, where Baker also develops and tests her own products and teaches brow master classes.
Best Tips
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“Use a highlighter beneath your brow line to mask errant hairs—it also really makes your eyes pop,” Baker says.
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“Be up-front with your brow specialist about what products you use regularly. You can’t have your brows waxed if you use retinol or Accutane, for example—it can tear and damage your skin,” she says. Peptide formulas can be a great alternative.
The Expert: Alixandria Capparelli
Known For: A signature microblading technique (“brow fluff”) that creates full, soft, graceful brows.
Where to Find Her: Hairy Little Things in Newport Beach and West Hollywood.
Best Tips
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“If you must tweeze your brows in between appointments, be conservative—only tweeze hairs visibly outside your brow shape,” Capparelli says.
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Her trick for finding those hairs? “Take something flat, like a business card or makeup brush, against your brow—either above or below, depending on where you’re plucking—and remove only the hairs that fall outside that line.”
San Francisco
The Expert: Michele Holmes
Known For: The best natural-looking brow shapes in the Bay Area and her much-obsessed-over Rye Beauty Brow Grooming Serum.
Where to Find Her: Michele Holmes Studio in San Francisco—it feels like an open, airy modern living room.
Best Tip
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“Skin and follicle health are the building blocks of healthy brows—so treat the entire brow area instead of just the hair,” Holmes says. “Apply sunscreen to avoid sun spots; use moisturizer on the skin under and around your brows; apply a little hair conditioner to your brows once a week during a shower; use a great brow gel to shape, set, and nourish; and properly wash off brow makeup at night.”
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Hydrating Face Cream
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Silky Conditioner
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Gentle Exfoliant
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Blends-Right-In Sunscreen
Chicago
The Expert: Courtney Allen
Known For: Full and defined eyebrows, brow shaping, and waxing.
Where to Find Her: The brow and facial salon Esthetic Haus in Wicker Park.
Best Tip
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“Hygiene is crucial when it comes to brow maintenance,” Allen says. “Make sure your brow artist uses freshly cleaned tools. At home, make sure the brow area is clean before you pluck or wax to help prevent irritation and breakouts.”
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AHA Toner
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Oil Cleanser
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Cream Cleanser
The Expert: Constance Mack Latham
Known For: Restorative brow microblading, waxing, threading, and tinting (her nickname is BrowMaven).
Where to Find Her: Brow and beauty studio Maven Esthetics in River North.
Best Tip
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“Always ask questions and discuss your end goals before you start a service,” says Latham. “No trained professional will ever feel offended by you asking questions or showing concern.”
Austin
The Expert: Kara Sanchez
Known For: Clients travel from all over the world for Sanchez’s nano brows—an advanced form of tattoo that mimics hair strokes for the most natural-looking brows. She’s developed her signature brow-shaping technique for over 25 years—the results are incredible.
Where to Find Her: Sanchez splits her time between her studios in Austin and Brentwood, Tennessee (a chic area outside Nashville).
Best Tips
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“Always fill in your brows—I use Westman’s Bonne Brow Pencil—to create symmetry and desired thickness before you tweeze or trim. This is by far the best way to avoid overtweezing and maintain the best shape for your brows,” says Sanchez. “This YouTube demonstrates how to do this using the trusted golden ratio measurements that have been used since 1815 by artists, architects, and painters alike—I use these daily to create the perfect brow on any type of face shape.”
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“For permanent brows—meaning tattoos—you must see healed work from the artist you are considering before getting the service,” says Sanchez. “Healed permanent brows should never be dark grey, purple, blue, or red. If they are, the artist has gone too deep, gone in too frequently, and used a poor-quality ink. Once any of those has happened, your only option is laser tattoo removal.”
Nashville
The Expert: Jennifer Tsourvakas
Known For: Effortlessly natural-looking brows through shaping, tinting, threading, waxing, tweezing, and lamination.
Where to Find Her: Beauty boutique Parlour 3 in Nashville’s trendy Brentwood suburb.
Best Tip
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“If you’re cleaning up your brows’ shape at home, avoid undoing the careful work your brow artist has done: Take white eyeliner and outline the shape of your brows,” says Tsourvakas. “Pluck only the hairs that fall outside the white line so you don’t overtweeze.”
How to Read the Menu at the Brow Salon
Microblading or Microfeathering
What it is: A semipermanent tattoo technique used to create the illusion of fuller, more-defined brows by creating tiny hairlike strokes throughout the entire brow. Microfeathering, a technique developed by Kristie Streicher, is similar to microblading but uses iron oxide pigments (they are considered the safest semipermanent pigments to use on skin) to fill in sparse areas, not the entire brow.
How long it lasts: 8 to 12 months.
Lamination
What it is: A process of straightening and lifting the brow hairs using a chemical solution, which gives the hairs more flexibility to move and shapes them to appear fuller and fluffier.
How long it lasts: Five to eight weeks.
Waxing
What it is: A hair-removal treatment where warm soft wax is applied to the brow and hairs are pulled out with a paper strip.
How long it lasts: Four to six weeks.
Sugaring
What it is: Similar to waxing, this treatment gently removes hair from the root using a room-temperature or warmed-up paste made of lemon, sugar, and water (and occasionally essential oils, honey, or salt), plus a paper or cloth strip.
How long it lasts: Four to six weeks.
Threading
What it is: A technique where a single thread coated with antibacterial wax is twisted into a mini lasso shape and used to pull hairs from the root.
How long it lasts: Four to six weeks.
Tinting
What it is: A custom dye treatment that temporarily darkens brows and enhances fullness.
How long it lasts: Three to six weeks.
Henna
What it is: A form of eyebrow tinting done with plant dye derived from a henna plant. (Henna, unlike some dyes, contains no ammonia, lead, or peroxide; however, it should be noted that so-called “black henna” dye contains PDP, the same toxic compound that’s found in many hair dyes.)
How long it lasts: One to six weeks.
