What makes a "perfect" mascara? This is the question we grappled with for years. How do you come up with a mascara that thickens and lengthens the lashes, lasts all day without weighing down, does not smudge or flake, while being easy to use, vegan, and cruelty free? We thought it might be as simple as combining the “best" brush with the “best" formula, but it was far more complicated than that.
We started our mascara journey with the brush and the wand. In 2016, we became obsessed with making a flexible mascara wand after seeing makeup artists keeping a bag of disposable mascara brushes and bending them for easier application. But how many of us have a bag of disposable brushes at home? And we did not want to make a bendable mascara just for the sake of having it bend. We wanted to deliver a fully customizable experience where anyone can experiment and find an angle(s) that works for them. A true “your way" experience!
So our work began. After coming home from our day jobs, we would sketch whatever ideas we had, drawing inspiration from any and everything that bends, including one of those bendy straws! Many, well all but one of these ideas, were either ridiculous, impossible or both. By the time we finally developed the flexible wand, we were older and hopefully wiser. And we had the wand that allows the mascara to bend up to 90 degree in four directions, making it possible for every user to find a comfortable angle depending on their eye shape and comfort. Or, if you wanted to apply mascara in a really tight space!
The next step was the brush. Everyone knows that the brush can make or break. The “perfect" brush must coat the lashes with just the right amount of formula to add volume but without clumpy mess. We wanted our brush to work like a dream! To catch and grab all lashes for that luxurious glide and even coverage and to “comb" for that perfectly fanned out, feathery look. And that is how we came up with our lash-hugging “helix" brush. A brush with tiny little soft spikes in a helix-like pattern to coat and separate each and every eyelash. At Meloway, we believe in no eyelash left behind!
We thought the hard part was over, but the formula posed just as much challenge. Long story short, we learned the hard way that there is no such thing as an objectively “good" formula, at least not on its own. Because our helix brush was designed to de-clump and separate lashes, we found out that typical “volumizing" formula ended up leaving lashes wimpy and barely tinted. We won’t bore you with excruciating details, but after developing and testing more than 100 formulas over the course of two years and some more, we knew had the best possible formula for our brush. Volumizing. Lengthening. Conditioning. Ultra-pigmented. Lightweight. Long lasting. Smudge free. Flake free. Clump free. Vegan. Cruelty Free. Paraben Free. Talc Free.
So there it is. Our four years of making Your Way Mascara.