Can a mascara dye your eyelashes?

The idea of a mascara that dyes lashes seems too good to be true: but is it? I decided to find out…

Can a mascara change your life? Well, that’s what this review of Rimmel Volume Colourist mascara aims to find out.

Well, sort of. Like, by “change your life”, I obviously mean, “dye your eyelashes”. And by “we”, I mean “me” – because you’re probably way too smart to see a TV advert for a mascara, and have it ordered by the end of the ad break, because the ad said it would dye your eyelashes (and strongly implied that you’d look like Georgia May Jagger after using it, into the bargain), and if we can’t trust the advertising industry, we might as well just give up on life altogether, right?

No, you definitely wouldn’t do that. That’s why you have me, though, and luckily for you, I WOULD do that. And I DID do it. And when I say I was hoping it would change my life, I’m only exaggerating a little bit, because my pale eyelashes are the bane of my life, seriously. Or, at least they were, until I tried to take some ‘before’ photos for this post, and now my weirdly wrinkled eyelids are the bane of my life. But that’s a problem for another miracle product to fix: for now, here’s the mascara in question:

It’s Rimmel London’s Volume Colourist Mascara With Lash Tint Complex, and yet again I find myself impressed and amazed by how concise and to-the-point cosmetic companies are with their product names. Not that I’m in a position to judge ANYONE for being a bit long-winded, mind you…

Anyway, as I said, I saw an advert for this on TV one night, and I ordered it right away, because this is no ordinary mascara, people: this is a mascara THAT ALSO DYES YOUR EYELASHES. Picture me dancing around screaming like a One Direction fan right now: THAT’S how excited I was by this. I, you see, have been dyeing my own eyelashes for years now: I even wrote a tutorial on it and everything – and I hardly ever write tutorials (mostly because, much like Jon Snow from Game of Thrones, I know nothing. About anything.) so that shows you just how comfortable I was with the ol’ eyelash dye.

Seriously, though: it was SO EASY – and so, so necessary, because, like most other redheads, I have lashes so pale they’re almost translucent. Mascara helps, obviously, but eyelash dye helps even more, because it doesn’t wash off (obviously), so you get to experience what it’s like to be a normal person, with lashes that aren’t invisible to the naked eye, and, as it turns out, I quite like that.

So, I’ve been dyeing my eyelashes on the regular for many long years now, and I’ve been using either this to do it. Then last year? Last year they changed their formula: yes, BOTH of them. Suddenly, the simple process I’d used for years, without any issues at all, became a long, tortuous procedure which invariably left me with tears streaming down my face (both from the dye and from sheer frustration), and eyelashes which were almost totally unchanged.

I was gutted – and I wasn’t the only one, because a bit of Googling revealed a LOT of bad reviews from people who’d also used this product for years, and who were now really disappointed by the change. I gave it a few goes, and I tried both brands, but for some reason they’d both changed to the same, complicated, craptastic new formula, and it just didn’t work AT ALL.

Bizarrely, I wasn’t able to find another product to replace it, either, so now I was left with two choices: either allow my lashes to revert to their natural, colourless state, or spend time and money driving to a salon to have a treatment I knew I could easily do at home, for a fraction of the price.

I went with option A: because I’m both cheap AND lazy, and if that’s not a winning combination, well, I don’t know what is.

Enter Rimmel Volume Colourist Mascara: a mascara that dyes lashes – allegedly.

This product makes the extraordinary claim that, in addition to curling, volumising and lengthening your lashes while you’re wearing it, it will also gradually deposit small amounts of dye on them, so after a couple of week’s use, your lashes will look dark and, well, visible, even when you take your mascara off. I didn’t believe this claim for a second, but I WANTED to believe it, and that’s half all the battle for me, so I ordered it immediately, and started to fantasize about the glossy black lashes that would soon be mine.

I’ll be completely honest: I really didn’t care what the mascara looked like on. All I cared about was that it was going to dye my lashes and make me look like Georgia May Jagger, and I figured that if it did that, then even if it turned out to be a really crappy mascara in every other respect, it would still be worth buying, because I could just wear it at home, or layer some other mascara over the top of it or something. (And also because now I’d look like a supermodel, obvs.) I had low expectations, basically, but low expectations aren’t always a bad thing, and in this case they turned out to be a good thing, because I was very pleasantly surprised by the mascara:

A mascara that dyes lashes?

I mean, it doesn’t give me lashes like a Disney Princess, and that’s a shame, because looking like a Disney Princess is all I’ve ever wanted from life. Well, that and a Smeg fridge. But it’s actually a really great mascara: it’s easy to apply (The brush is exactly the shape I like – not so fat that it’s impossible to use without getting product all over my face, not so thin that you feel like you have to apply half the tube just to get decent coverage), doesn’t clump, doesn’t smudge… For evening-wear, I’d want something with a bit more drama, obviously, but as an everyday mascara, I like it. A lot, actually.

Is it really a mascara that dyes lashes, though?

LOL! Of course it doesn’t dye your eyelashes! Or it didn’t dye mine, rather – I guess it could dye yours, in which case, lucky you – you’ve got a decent mascara AND an eyelash dye in one! As for me, though, I’ve used it every day for the past few weeks (Yes, every single day: I don’t really do the “natural” look…) and there’s been absolutely no change to the colour of my eyelashes at all. None. Nada. Now, bear in mind that my lashes are super-pale, so even the slightest change would be noticeable, and I’m guessing that either I got a dud tube of mascara, or that it really doesn’t make a difference. I’m bitterly disappointed about this, obviously, but also kind of relived, because at least this means I don’t have to publish those weird ‘before’ shots of my creepy eyelids – every cloud, right?

In conclusion?

If you’re looking for a nice, non-clumpy mascara at an affordable price, Rimmel Volume Colourist mascara is your guy. If, on the other hand, you’re looking to dye your eyelashes without, you know, actually dyeing your eyelashes, this is not the droid you’re looking for. On the plus side though, now that someone has come up with this idea and attempted to put it on the market, it’s surely only a matter of time before everyone else tries to copy it, and someone does it better? We can but hope…

Rimmel Volume Colourist Mascara – buy it here