HOW TO CREATE WISPY HYBRID LASHES
How do you make wispy hybrid lashes? This is a question we get asked all the time and it’s something that, at first glance might have a simple answer, but when it comes down to it there are a few ways you might answer. First, we have to answer two questions: ‘what are wispy lashes’, and ‘what are hybrid lashes’. Once we’ve answered those questions, we should be able to really pinpoint what wispy hybrids are, and how we can make them for our clients.
What are Wispy Lashes?
Wispy lash extensions are basically eyelash extensions that have an irregular top line. If you’ve been in the industry for a few years, you might remember when American lash techs adopted the term ‘Hollywood Volume’ as a kind of rebellious sister of Russian Volume. If you don’t know what we're talking about, we'll explain.
Russian volume was - and still is, at its core - characterized by a super even top line where no lash was out of place. You’d achieve this by applying different length lashes to each layer, so that when the client opened their eyes the top line of their lashes was so even it looked digitally created. If you’re wondering, you would drop down a length as you went up a layer, so bottom layer would have, say, 10mm, the middle layer would have a 9mm extension and the top layer would have an 8mm extension so that when the eye was open there would be no steps between lengths anywhere on the eye. It’s impressive and it's a skill, but it’s painstakingly laborious and, really, is it what our clients want?
Well, it seemed not as American lash techs stepped in and did away with the dropping down of lengths, and went a little more rogue. Wispy, spiky top lines came more into the fore, and thanks to Kim K and other celebs with their eye-catching spiky lash looks, the lash industry fell in love with that edgier style.
Now, ‘wispy’ tends to refer more to a light spiky set, rather than all out spikes which are either referred to as Kim K or as wet look lashes, depending on how pronounced those spikes are.
What are Hybrid Lashes?
Hybrid lashes are a mixture of classic lashes (one extension to one natural lash) and volume lashes. A hybrid lash set might be 50% classic and 50% volume, or it could be 25%/75% one way or the other - you might even argue that a Kim K set with almost all volume and just a few flat lashes for spikes is a hybrid set - any way you mix classic lashes and volume eyelash extensions would be considered a hybrid set.
So how do the two come together? How can we categorize a wispy hybrid set?
Well, like we said a little bit earlier the term ‘wispy’ tends to conjure up images of a lighter set with and irregular top line, so to create a wispy hybrid lash set we might opt for lighter volume with classic lashes mixed in that are 2-4mm longer than our fans. Ideally, we want to keep our fans quite wide in a wispy hybrid set to really up the fluff factor. Or, you could even add in some bold spikes for an even more dramatic.
When it comes to thickness, we’d suggest 0.07 in 5D mixed in with some 0.15 classic lashes for that light-but-impactful wispy hybrid lash look your clients will LOVE!
Do you have some wispy hybrid lashes to show off? Tag us on Instagram and show us! @london_lash_usa
