REVIEW: Milk Makeup Eye Marker

My first experience with the Milk Makeup range didn't go so well. One product disliked my face, another didn't work for me at all, and a third product was really nice, though nothing new or revolutionary. Despite those sad results, I decided to give the brand one more shot with an item that seemed smartly designed and right up my alley: their Eye Marker, a liquid eyeliner that is designed to look and function like an actual marker.

The Milk Makeup Eye Marker currently only has one shade, a black called Black Sheep, though I'm sure they'll expand the range in a bit. It retails for $20, which is about par for the course for high end liquid liners. The packaging is a hard tube with some rubberized pieces and a lid that snaps on tightly. I'm sad to say that the tube smells strongly of rubber for the first few weeks. That's not the end of the world, and the smell does fade, but it's worth noting.

The tip is firm and stiff, but not rough or painful, and comes to a decently thin, flat tip with beveled sides. This is meant to make it easy to draw whatever line you want, similar to doing calligraphy on paper.

Unfortunately, it's not always easy to draw with this product. The picture above shows my first attempt at using the Eye Marker. On the one hand, I was able to get the outer half of my eyes done in mere seconds, and drawing the wing was a breeze. (I went back in and darkened it after taking this photo.) However, I found it very hard to make the line perfectly smooth and even; you can see that the edges of my liner look a tad "rough" in this photo.

Also, the shape of the eyeliner tube makes it a bit awkward to draw on the inner third of the eyelid. I have small, deep set eyes, so when I tried tilting the marker to finish off my liner, I couldn't seem to hold the marker steadily without smacking my browbone. I eventually got the hang of this after 3 or 4 uses, but it's worth noting that the Milk Makeup Eye Marker is not quite as ergonomic as it seems.

I also had to make more than one pass with this liner, drawing the same eyeliner shape twice to ensure smooth, even color. The problem is that the tip of the marker is either pulling up the liquid liner, or it's not applying it as evenly as the rest of the marker, leaving a line of blank space. You can see it in the swatch above. This isn't the end of the world, since you can get your eyeliner on quickly with this product, and you can avoid this entirely if you just use the beveled side of the marker. But it's definitely an added frustration to have to do it all twice if you want a thin line.

The biggest disappointment, for me, is the wear. Milk claims that this product will wear for 24 hours without fading, and while I definitely didn't experience fading, I did notice a lot of smearing and some flaking with this product. That was the nail in the coffin for me. My $3 Wet n' Wild liquid eyeliner will wear for hours with zero smudging or flaking, and it's easier to get a smooth, solid line.

Yet again, it seems like Milk has created a product that looks cool and works well in theory, but doesn't really function in practice. It's "cool concept" over "smart concept." And that, my friends, has turned me off of the line, at least for the time being.

RATING: 2 out of 5

Milk Makeup is available at MilkMakeup.com.