How Kirsten Coleman Helped Kate Build a Brow She Could Actually Do Herself
There’s a particular kind of makeup disaster that happens to agreeable people. You sit in the chair, someone hands you a face that isn’t yours, and you’re too polite to say so. Kate knew it well — she once walked away from a session with what she affectionately calls “full Bert and Ernie eyebrows,” and decided, somewhere in there, that it was time to develop her own standards.
So she came to StyldLife makeup artist Kirsten Coleman — a 14-year veteran of TV and film, fresh off shooting HBO’s Euphoria — with a smart, modest goal. Kate films on camera roughly once a week. Not red-carpet fancy; “medium fancy,” as she put it. She didn’t want a full beat. She wanted to pick one thing at a time, learn it properly, and build from there.
Kirsten loved the plan. “I love it when there’s a follow-up,” she said, “because then I can ask: how did this work for you? What do we adjust?” But first, the disclaimer she gives everyone — and the reason Kate exhaled: “There is no right way to do makeup. Don’t listen to anyone who says this is the right way. Everyone’s got an opinion. What’s right for you is what you should be working on.” For someone who’d been talked into the wrong face before, it was the whole point.
For on-camera work, Kirsten’s everyday formula is deliberately short: mascara, eyeliner, brows, a little concealer, call it a day. Blush if you want it; it’s quick. The piece people find intimidating — and where this session landed — is the eyes. So they started with brows.
The first thing Kirsten did was talk Kate out of a product. Kate had bought a pile of supplies, including the thick, sharpenable brow pencils. Kirsten’s verdict was kind but clear: those are essentially a 1960s tool, built for people with sparse or no brows, and on someone with plenty of natural hair they’ll read like “a caterpillar.” Kate had brows to work with. What she needed was a fine-tip brow pen, used with a barely-there hand — just tipping the point so each stroke is the width of a single hair, laid in the direction the hair already grows. The aim isn’t a perfect drawn line (“I hate it when it looks perfect,” Kirsten said) — it’s a few invisible hairs filling the thin spots.
Then came the genuinely useful, slightly counterintuitive parts. Build the brow up in the arch to lift and open the eye — and resist adding underneath, which closes it. Go a shade lighter than your natural color first, adding depth only where you need it; loading in with your true color tends to read as “too much.” And don’t chase symmetry too hard. Even Kirsten’s own brows sit at slightly different heights, so she balances rather than matches — filling one side a touch more to bring the two into agreement. Watching it happen on Kate’s face in real time, the difference was immediate. “This is already nicer on this one,” Kate said. “I like that.”
The product talk was a working pro’s brain dump, not a sponsored list. Kate’s beloved Lime Crime brow gels and Benefit’s Gimme Brow for fluff and texture both earned a nod. The thick pencils, gently retired. Pixi pens in two shades, kept for experimenting (Kirsten’s tip: photograph one brow in each so you can compare). And her own religiously-used, can’t-live-without-it fine pen — Glossier’s Brow Flick — the one she’d reached for on an actor that very morning, because “it literally makes the teeniest hairs you can imagine.”
What made it work wasn’t the gear. It was the format: a high-detail camera zoomed in close, a stylist narrating every micro-decision, and a client who got to try it on her own face, in her own light, with someone to ask “is this okay?” at each step. Kate didn’t leave with a look she’d have to recreate from memory. She left with a skill — and a standing invitation to come back for under-eyes, contour, and the rest, one confident thing at a time.
Meet your stylist: Kirsten Coleman — union makeup artist and 14-year TV & film veteran (Euphoria), based in Los Angeles. Book with Kirsten: https://styldlifebookings.as.me/KirstenColeman
This story reflects a real, paid StyldLife client session. To protect our client’s privacy, the client is not pictured.