Long before Kim Kardashian burst onto the scene, another lustrous-skinned, curvaceous-bodied, almond-eyed beauty redefined the rules of gorgeousness.
With her Italian heritage and sensuality – “Everything you see I owe to spaghetti,” she once famously quipped – Sophia Loren entranced cinema and beauty lovers throughout 1950s and ‘60s, with her award-winning performances and mesmerising looks.
If sales of liquid liner soared throughout these years, La Loren – and her signature feline-eyed look – is the reason.
Image: allposters.com
Actually, Sophia still inspires liquid liner lovers to this day. Any time you spot a swoop of black liner on the catwalk or red carpet, there’s a good chance that Sophia was the muse. To this day, her style of liner is the ultimate in glamorous eye makeup.
But there has always been a lot more to Sophia than stunning eye makeup. “If you haven’t cried, your eyes can’t be beautiful,” she once said. And she’s shown us every possible emotion on the big screen, unafraid of putting her lines and furrows out there for all to see super-sized (on that note, if you haven’t yet had the privilege of watching Two Women, and Sophia’s spectacular turn – she was the first non-American to win a Best Actress gong at the Oscars, in 1960 – search it out at once).
Off screen, Sophia hasn’t shied away from ageing. Sure, there’s the nip and tuck here and there. But hey, she’s 80. Well, she will be tomorrow. And if she wants to treat herself to some surgery in order to feel better about life, then surely she’s earned that right.
And anyway, to me she’s not hiding behind anything, as many surgery-addled stars seem to be. She still owns that red carpet. She looks to still be passionately in love with life after all these years, grabbing it with both bejewelled hands and giving it a big lipstick-laden smooch.
30 years ago, Sophia released a book called Women & Beauty, in which she touched on the issue of ageing as a female.
“Having pride in your experience will keep you satisfied with your age, whatever it is,” she wrote. “If you can look at yourself and know that you have faced difficulties and overcome them, taken risks and dealt with the consequences, gambled with your time and your love and at least sometimes won, then you will feel glad to be the age you are.”
As another of Sophia’s famous quotes goes: “Beauty is how you feel inside, and it reflects in your eyes. It is not something physical.”
Although a little liquid liner could just be the perfect frame for the window to that inner beauty.
Tell us, Primpers, who is your beauty icon?
Kat x