By Michelle Bodean, Founder of Michelle Lashes-Brows-Beauty, 1202P 75th St, Downers Grove, IL 60516
A woman sat in my chair last month, pulled up a photo on her phone, and said “I want these.” The photo was a mega volume set on a model with thick, dense natural lashes, and about forty more of them per eye than my client had.
I get that phone photo four or five times a week. It’s never the right starting point, and I say that with love, because I understand why you do it. You see a set you like. You want that set. What you can’t see in the photo is the natural lash underneath doing all the work.
So here’s the process I actually run when someone new sits down at the studio. It’s a sequence of questions I ask in order, where each answer closes off some options and opens others. If you read this before your appointment, you’ll walk in knowing roughly where you land, and we can spend our time on the interesting part.
This decides more than everything else combined.
I look at three things. How many natural lashes you have. How thick each one is. And how healthy they are right now, today.
If you’ve got a decent amount of natural lashes with a few gaps here and there, and each lash has some substance to it, you have options. Nearly all of them. Lucky you.
If your natural lashes are sparse, or fine, or both, the heavy sets come off the table immediately. Not because I don’t want to do them. Because your natural lash can’t hold them. A mega volume fan can run ten to twenty extensions attached to one natural lash. That lash carries the weight for the next three weeks while it grows out. Ask a fine lash to do that and it gives up, and it takes a while to grow back. I’ve written before about whether lash extensions damage your natural lashes, and this is where the answer turns. Applied correctly, they don’t. Applied too heavy for what your lash can carry, they do.
If your lashes are already damaged from previous work, we’re not choosing a set today at all. We’re talking about a break, or a lash lift instead, or a very light classic while things recover.
The question nobody expects and everybody should ask.
Oil breaks down lash adhesive from the base, which is the exact spot the bond needs to hold. If you have oily skin, and you know if you do, then a set with fewer contact points will hold better for you than a dense one. Not always. But often enough that I bring it up early.
Volume fans have more surface area sitting against your lash line. More surface, more places for oil to get in. Some of my oiliest clients wear volume beautifully because they’re religious about cleaning. Some aren’t religious about cleaning, and for them I’d rather do a gorgeous hybrid that still looks good at week three than a volume set that gaps by week two and makes both of us unhappy.
If you want to know what else works against your retention, I keep a list of the things that weaken eyelash extensions, and most of it is habits rather than genetics.
Tell me about your actual life, not your aspirational life.
Do you wear eye makeup daily? Do you swim? Do you sleep on your face? Do you have a newborn? Do you work outside? Do you rub your eyes when you’re tired, and be honest, because everyone does.
Someone who swims four mornings a week and someone who works in an air conditioned office need different sets, even with identical natural lashes. The swimmer is putting her lashes through chlorine and constant wetness. I’m not going to sell her the most delicate, highest maintenance option and then act surprised in three weeks. Summer makes this sharper for everyone, which I got into in my breakdown of how long lash extensions last in humid Chicago summers.
This is also where the fill schedule enters. My studio rule is that a fill happens when you still have 50 percent or more of the work left, and that means coming in before three weeks. Past three weeks I’m removing the old work and building a new set, at full set price. A Russian fill is $135. A Russian full set is $210. That gap is entirely a scheduling decision, and I’d rather you know it now than discover it at checkout.
If you can’t reliably get in every three weeks, tell me. It changes what I recommend. A lighter set aging out gracefully beats a dramatic set falling apart on schedule.
Only now do we get to the photo on your phone.
Once we know what your lash can carry, how your skin behaves, and how you live, the aesthetic question gets easy, because there are usually only two or three real options left and they’re all sets you’ll be happy with.
Classic ($170) is a single extension on a single natural lash. Clean, defined, your lashes but better. If you have decent natural lashes and want people to say you look rested rather than say you got lashes done, that’s classic. Mega classic ($180) is the same technique with more texture and density, for the client who tries classic and says “I love this, can it be more.”
Hybrid ($195) mixes classic lashes and small fans, two or three extensions where your natural lash can take them. It fills gaps that classic leaves and gives you texture without the full commitment of volume. It’s the set I place most often, honestly, because it fits the most people.
Wispy ($200) builds in visible spikes and a feathered edge, longer at the outer corners and shorter toward the inner. It’s a specific look that tends to speak to people immediately or not at all.
Russian volume ($210) is multiple fine silk lashes, 0.05 or 0.07, fanned onto one natural lash. Fullness and drama that stays comfortable because each individual extension is so light. This is where technique starts mattering more than product.
Mega volume ($260) is the biggest thing I do. Ten to twenty extensions per fan. Dark, dense, dramatic. It needs a strong natural lash and an owner who maintains it. When it’s right it’s stunning. When it’s wrong it’s a repair job six months later.
If you’re torn between hybrid and Russian specifically, that’s the most common fork in this whole process, and I wrote a longer piece on hybrid versus Russian volume that walks through the difference properly.
The pattern I see, here in Downers Grove and in the decade before that starting in Europe:
Most people who walk in asking for mega volume belong in hybrid or Russian. Most people who walk in asking for “something natural” are surprised by how much they like mega classic. And almost everyone underestimates how much their aftercare decides whether they love the set or resent it.
The set is maybe 40 percent of your result. Your natural lash and your habits are the rest. That ratio is uncomfortable if you were hoping to solve this with a photo and a credit card, but it’s true, and pretending otherwise is how people end up with lash damage and a grudge.
I turn work away. Not often, but I do.
If your natural lashes can’t carry what you’re asking for, I’ll tell you, and I’ll offer you the version they can carry. If you have an active infection or irritation, we reschedule. If you had work done somewhere else two days ago and want me to double it up, no.
I judge lash competitions internationally and I train other artists, and the thing I see over and over in bad work isn’t a lack of skill. It’s an artist who couldn’t say no. The American Academy of Ophthalmology has published on how the eye area reacts to extensions and the adhesives involved, and the short version is that it’s a sensitive place that punishes shortcuts.
You can read all of this and still be wrong about your own lashes. Most people are. I can’t tell you what you should get from a description of your face, but I can tell you in about ninety seconds with your eyes in front of me under good light.
That’s what the consultation is for, and it’s why I keep insisting on it. Ten minutes at the start saves a bad set and a frustrated client at week two.
If you’re in Downers Grove, Naperville, Woodridge, Lisle, or Westmont and you want someone to be straight with you about what’ll work on your actual lashes, come see me. Bring the phone photo. We’ll figure out what part of it we can give you.
Call (630) 822-0201 or book online. The studio is at 1202P 75th St, Downers Grove, IL 60516. Free parking, and I’ll have coffee.
