How To Know If Your Brows Suit Your Face, According to an Award-Winning Brow Artist

The brows are one of the biggest indicators of the zeitgeist. In the ’90s, everyone was a little too heavy-handed with their tweezers, with thin brows being the most in vogue at the time. Later on, the “brows on fleek” movement had girls drawing on blocked, heavily tinted brows. Today, laminated brows are the trend du jour. But does that mean the trendiest looks suit everyone?

Award-winning brow artist Pia Lee is one of the country’s pioneers of hairstroke techniques, an eyebrow tattooing method that creates airy hair-like strokes with lesser downtime. In turn, Lee’s expertise draws people from all over the world to her clinic in Bulacan to achieve brows that enhance their features and make them feel confident.  

In a one-on-one interview with Allure Philippines she shares her professional brow tips on finding the right brows for you despite fast-changing trends—from understanding facial harmony and brow shape to how brows can even transform one’s expression.

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How do eyebrows change the way our face is perceived? 

Brows frame the face, like, how it will make a person more beautiful. Like, for example, it doesn’t mean that if  their eyebrows are small, it’s already ugly. It also doesn’t mean that their  eyebrows are long, it’s already beautiful. It’s not like that.

So, as a brow artist, that’s my job, to design the brows that match the appearance and lifestyle of our client.

What’s a small thing that can completely change someone’s face? 

Of course, the brows. The brows are not the main feature of our face. It will always be the eyes, the nose, the lips. What the brows do is enhance it. So, it’s like a supporting role of these features. So, if you put on brows, for example, your eyes brighten your nose, it enhances your nose, lips. 

How are eyebrows important in our facial features?

It’s very important, because they can see another version of them when they have brows that really suit them. 

What are some of the eyebrow shapes that you do for your clients? 

When I design the brows, I don’t design it uniformly. So, we study facial symmetry, we have what we call muscle pulls—the client’s expression. We don’t have a stencil that we follow. You look at how the client speaks, you look at the angle where it’s beautiful, and we bring out what their beautiful expression is.It really depends. 

You can’t say, I want this brow, this is what you do to me. It doesn’t work like that. Every client has their own brows. We always say that the brows don’t have to be symmetrical, they don’t have to be uniform. They have to be balanced. That’s why our motto in our clinic is kahit hindi pantay, basta bagay. 

Does our eyebrow arch affect our facial expression? 

Definitely, our expressions are normally on the eyebrows. And then, we have emotions that we create, so, it needs the right spacing in the eyes. You look at the symmetry, the distance of the eyes to the eyebrows. 

If it’s too high, it makes you look like you’re always awake. And if it’s too low, it makes you look like you’re always sad.

What is the Yapistrokes technique?

Yapistrokes is different from microblading. So, what we do is we do not slice the skin. I’m one of the first to introduce that in the Philippines. It doesn’t have downtime. If you have a party later, you can still party and no one will notice that you did something to your eyebrows—it’s very wearable. 

That’s the difference with other procedures because, with some you have to stay at home for one week to heal first. I made the technique for those clients who want little, or no downtime.