• Eyelash extensions are meticulously applied by professional aestheticians to achieve a dramatic look and emphasize the eyes.

Eyelash Extensions: Window Dressing for the Soul

Eyelid-enhancing lash extensions create a lush look. Learn what to expect with Groupon’s exploration of these eyelash impostors.

The first modern false eyelashes were made from human hair, commissioned by silent-film director D. W. Griffith so that his starlet’s lashes would touch her cheeks with every soulful downward gaze. Although you may think it’d be hard to improve on these natural materials, in reality, the difference in texture between eyelashes and the stuff that grows from the head would make such extensions look a little strange. Stick-on strips have been available in drugstores for decades, but it wasn’t until the mid-2000s that cosmetic scientists developed semipermanent extensions. Also known as grafted lashes, these delicate fibers fuse to the top of pre-existing lashes with pharmaceutical-grade glue, lending eyes a lush, natural-looking fringe without the use of mascara.

As clients lie on a table with their eyes shut, a professional applies artificial lashes strand by strand, carefully bonding them about a millimeter away from the eyelid to avoid any contact with the skin or eye. The look stays intact for about two to six weeks—natural eyelashes have a finite lifespan, and when they fall out, they take the extensions with them.

Lash extensions generally come in two varieties: mink and synthetic. Mink extensions are made from sanitized, hypoallergenic hairs collected by brushing live mink, the same petite carnivores whose famously soft fur is prized for a variety of other applications. For synthetic extensions, lab technicians replicate the look and feel of natural hairs by forging lashes from plastic, faux-mink poly fibers, silk blends, or high-quality keraspecific fibers, which are chemically identical to real human hair. No matter the material, extensions should feel comfortable and light as they frame what poets have long called “the windows to the soul” and “the worst part of the face to be poked in.”