At the beginning of this year, Instagram posts from backstage of New York Fashion Week brought to us a very intriguing product indeed: an upcoming liquid eyeliner that was made to resemble a pizza cutter.
A pizza cutter?!! 🍕 Okay, the M.A.C Rollerwheel isn’t going to slice through your eyelids, obviously, but what it is is a liquid eyeliner with a revolutionary applicator: a thin round wheel that you use by rolling the edge over the eyes. This means that the eyeliner goes on ultra-thin, and yes, you’re essentially applying it with a hard plastic edge.
The M.A.C Rollerwheel finally landed on our desks last week, and of course, all of the eyeliner-wearing people in the NYLON team jumped at the chance to give it a try. It comes in 4 shades: matte black, shiny black, brown, and electric blue.
A quick try of the roller wheel applicator showed that indeed, it was able to draw extremely thin lines. But obviously, how it feels on the back of the hand can’t be compared to how it performs on the eyes. So, will roller wheels be the next big thing in eyeliner, or should they just be kept for cutting pizza? Here are our reviews.
Adele Chan, Editor-in-Chief
WHAT IS THIS?
I think this is going to be one of the most polarising beauty products of the year. M.A.C’s new Rollerwheel liquid eyeliner is exactly what its name implies — it’s a liquid eyeliner with a roller wheel for a tip. To line eyes, you roll the wheel along your eyelid, and it will supposedly paint on a smooth, intense, liquid line. It’s meant to be fast and easy to use, and there’s already a lot of hype about it online.
I TRIED IT AND…
I injured myself. I rolled the wheel too close to my eyeball and yup…I scratched the surface of it. It was sharp, and it was painful. The accident made me tear for the next five minutes, and I eventually had to wipe off and redo my entire eye makeup for the day. I know I should have been more careful, but the roller wheel was hard to control; it had a mind of its own and rolled a path straight into my eyeball. There’s no way in hell I’m going to try this product again. When I returned to my brush pen eyeliner, the smooth, soft tip felt like heaven. HEAVEN!
ON YOUTUBE VIDEOS:
See here: This vlogger keeps saying how fast and easy it is to use this roller eyeliner, but watch how she applies the product, and look carefully at the lines she has drawn… they don’t look smooth at all, and I can actually see her struggling to control the tip to draw a straight line. She ends her review by saying that if you’re not really good at applying liquid liner, this is a good way to get started. WRONG! This is a terrible way to get started. A brush pen with a tip that is not too soft and not too hard is the best way to get started. I currently think this one from Chanel is the best in the market right now.
RATING: 1 out of 5 wheels.
Tami Lai, Associate Editor
LIQUID EYELINER REALLY IS MY THING:
I’d like to think I’m pretty good at doing my eyeliner. After all, it’s been a daily routine for a few years now, so at this point, I can line my eyes with a variety of liner types: pen, brush, crayon, thick, thin… all without taking too long.
HOW IT FARED:
This M.A.C Rollerwheel, however, completely delayed my makeup routine. Somehow, I just was unable to get the rollerwheel to draw smooth curves along my upper lashlines – all I got were crooked, patchy lines, no matter how steady my hands were. When I tried to draw in the flicks, it became even harder to control, and I ended up drawing a much larger wing than I originally intended. After about 15 minutes of frustrating removal and reapplication, I gave up, and just grabbed my regular eyeliner to get the job done, so I could finally leave the house.
IS IT BEGINNER-SAFE?
Maybe I don’t have the skills of the vloggers and makeup artists who have been putting up videos of themselves very effortlessly using the Rollerwheel Liner, but a liquid liner should never require the skills of a pro to use properly. And if someone like me, who lines with liquid liner pretty much every day, can’t get it right, then eyeliner beginners shouldn’t even go near this product.
RATING: 2 out of 5 wheels.
Amelia Tan, Associate Editor
EXPECTATION:
To be honest, liquid eyeliners that we review mostly look the same, with a pen or brush tip in some slim black packaging, but the idea of the “pizza wheel-style” of the M.A.C Rollerwheel intrigued me; is this little tool boldly going where no others have gone before, is this the new future of beauty innovation? Yeah, I tend to be optimistic about these things. On paper, this sounds like a godsend — we’re supposed to get a smooth line with fuss-free and quick application. When I tried it out on the back of my hand, I was impressed at the incredibly thin line it produced, which became smudge-proof in no time. Ooh, fingers crossed!
REALITY:
Okay, so… I’ll try to be fair here, but I have to say, things did not go well. At all. I was genuinely excited while holding the product in my hand, but on my first roll, I went way past where I usually draw my line without meaning to. It was also rather difficult to navigate the curvature of my eyelid too, since the wheel favours straight lines. The good thing though is that a wing tip was slightly easier to achieve (create a triangle at the edge of your eye), and it does create a dark, intense black.
Still, I cleaned off the edges and started again, but because I took so long, the liquid had already dried on my wheel and went on patchy and flaky. Sigh, that’s another redo… I then scrambled for an instruction manual of some sort, then thought, hey, why does an eyeliner need to come with instructions? That’s a clear sign the product isn’t as intuitive as beauty bloggers have lauded it to be. I’m supposed to feel confident, not doubt my mastery of makeup!
Of course I refused to be belittled by it, so I then used it over the next three days. The verdict? While I got used to the motion (apparently, rocking it back and forth makes it more controlled), I felt constantly worried about how it will turn out, and no way should your daily eyeliner be a scary experience. Plus, I realised it coats my lashes and makes filling small in-between spaces more tedious than it should be.
SHOULD YOU GET IT?
It’s truly innovative — we’ve never heard anything quite like this before. And if you’re confident of creating defined lines, along with the graphic look, go ahead. For beginners and amateurs though, I’d say, go to a M.A.C store and try it for yourself before investing in this one.
RATING: 2 out of 5 wheels.
M.A.C Rollerwheel Liquid Liner, $36. Available at M.A.C stores and counters from 3 August 2017. maccosmetics.com.sg
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