How Not to Apply Eye Liner on a Plane?

When you think about planes, you probably think very convenient transport mode.

When I think about planes, I do think that as well of course. But I also think about tumbler dryers.

Because my hair and skin certainly look and feel like they have been tumbled dried after any given plane journey.

No matter what precautions I take (extra hydrating moisturiser, hair carefully pulled up and absolutely no sleeping on my seat-neighbour’s shoulder) and no matter the distance (90 minutes or 13 hours flights), I ALWAYS end up, well, tumble dried!

Very often, I only have to deal with the inconvenience of looking, mmm, suboptimal shall I say when I land in my home country of Morocco, sparking my mum’s urgent need to book a facial, a hairdresser and a waxing appointments (the later only because it is so cheap it is always worth it and not any indication on my personal grooming routines which by the way are perfect thank you very much).

Anyway.

But the aforementioned dishevelled state is more of a bigger issue when flying for work and want to make a decent impression.

So I experimented.

I tried putting on my super wonderful moisturiser + long lasting make up. And I still looked as washed out as if I spent 12hours out on the town. No make it 12 years. Probably the number of years since I actually have been out on the town….(pause and reflect on the good old days when I didn’t sleep for a week and still looked fresh).

I tried pulling my hair together in a tight bun + hairspray it to an inch of its life. And I still ended up with a mushroom looking thingy on my head …with no chance of a fix given the aforementioned hairspray.

A long story short. I found out the best solution was to fly “au naturel”.

And by that I mean, I leave my hair and skin “free”. After my shower, I simply dry my hair in no specific style and leave it lose (drying is mandatory given I usually take a 7 am flight and early morning freezing temperatures and wet hair are never a good match). And for my skin, after exfoliating  (I know hard work at 5am but so needed) I simply layer on my favourite hyper hydrating moisturiser. Obviously for this plan to work, you either look flawless au natural, or in my case do not care about what anybody thinks about your looks before 9 am. Back up plan:  you could put on some big dark sunglasses (also a good idea for those who sleep in-flight).

Then once I land, I jump into the airport bathrooms (thankfully always spotless) and quickly 1) apply my trusted terracotta (for a hint of colour), 2) whizz a line of black eye liner (my make up equivalent of a work uniform), 3) layer on the mascara and 4) style my hair in my trademark messy bun. A pshiiit of my Chanel N5 (thank you dear Chanel lady who gave me a bunch of 5 ml travel sizes). And, oh,  if you must know, I also swap my flat travelling shoes for some sky high heels.

And like superman, 5 min later, I am out of the bathrooms and I am ready to take on the (business) world.

This cunning plan has been working for me brilliantly over the last years.

Until last time when I got too confident and decided to spice things up. In truth, my stratetgy change was driven by the fact that my plane was late and I was really tight on time and thus wanted to save on the 5 min beauty detour.

What did I do? I decided to get my face done as the plane was, as they say, taxiing into its parking space.

I started by applying my blush – and so far so good. I could do this in my sleep, whilst running a marathon (if I ever were to run a marathon).

The next step – eye liner – not so much unfortunately.

For one, I needed some kind of mirror to apply my liner. So here I am balancing my Terracota blusher mirror on the my water bottle on the table in front me ( only to be told off by the air hostess).

Instead of letting it go, I attempt at drawing a line sans mirror. Do I even need to spell out what happened ? Di-sas-ter!

And instead of saving myself 5 minutes, I ended up losing 10 more fixing this mess.

We have a saying in moroccan that basically says “speed up, you end up late”.

Oh and what did I tell my brave team after emerging from the bathroom 15min later? “I guess I have a topic for new post!”. Typically me, always glass half full.

Bisous bisous.