Blake Lively and the Art of Working With Hooded Eyes

Blake Lively has spent two decades on red carpets, magazine covers and paparazzi shots, and somehow her eye shape keeps coming up in makeup forums from Sydney to Perth. The reason is simple: her lids sit behind a soft fold that most people would label hooded, yet she consistently looks bright-eyed, polished and unmistakably put together. Studying how her glam team handles that fold teaches the rest of us a lot about working with what we have.

What follows is a breakdown of her eye shape, the techniques her makeup artists rely on, and the practical tweaks anyone with a similar lid can borrow. Whether you're prepping for a Brisbane wedding, a Saturday brunch in Melbourne, or just want your everyday makeup to hold up through a humid Sydney arvo, the playbook is more adaptable than it looks.

Why Blake Lively's eye shape gets so much attention

A quick scroll through Blake's archive shows the same defining feature across decades of photos: a defined crease that folds over the mobile lid, sometimes hiding half of her eyeshadow. Beauty editors have called her eyes almond-shaped, deep-set and hooded interchangeably, which is exactly the confusion most readers run into when they look in the mirror and try to name their own lid.

The defining trait is the position of the brow bone relative to the lash line. When the brow bone sits low and the skin between the brow and the lashes drapes over the lid, you have a hooded eye. Blake's fold is on the gentler end of the spectrum, which gives her makeup team more canvas to work with than someone with a deeper hood. It also means the techniques she uses translate easily to most hooded lids, not just the most dramatic folds.

The anatomy behind her fold

The crease in a hooded eye isn't really a crease in the traditional sense. It's a flap of skin that sits below the brow bone and partially covers the mobile lid when the eye is open. Blake's fold is fairly symmetrical, but even she shows mild asymmetry in candid photos where one brow sits a touch higher than the other. If you've ever noticed that your eyeshadow photographs slightly differently from side to side, you're not imagining things, and why hooded eyes often look asymmetrical in photos walks through the mechanics of why that happens.

What's useful about studying Blake's face is that her features are soft rather than sharp. Her brow line is full and slightly arched, her lash line is dark and her skin tone is warm. Those elements give her makeup team room to play with subtle shimmer without making the lid look heavy. For readers in Australia, this is the point where it becomes worth tracking down similar tones at Mecca or Priceline rather than guessing from swatches online.

Her signature approach to everyday makeup

Blake's off-duty look is famously minimal. Her stylist has spoken about her preference for skin tint, a touch of cream blush and a single shadow across the lid. When the cameras are off, she tends toward taupe, soft bronze or muted champagne, all shades you can find in the Australis, Eye of Horus or Hourglass stands at any major Australian beauty retailer.

The trick her team relies on is placement, not intensity. A wash of matte shadow across the mobile lid keeps the eye looking rested rather than made-up. A thin line of brown or charcoal along the upper lash line defines the eye without competing with the fold. A quick curl through the lashes opens everything up. None of this requires a kit packed with twelve palettes and three mascaras; it's a streamlined approach that translates to a quick morning before the school run or a long shift at the office.

Eyeshadow placement that lifts the lid

The single most useful tip for anyone with Blake's fold is to push colour above the crease, not into it. When you blend a deeper tone into the socket line, the fold tends to eat that colour the moment your eye opens, leaving you with a flat, muddy result. The trick is to take a mid-tone shadow and sweep it just above where your natural crease sits when your eye is open, then blend upward toward the brow bone.

For a softer everyday look, a single satin shadow in a champagne or soft bronze placed across the lid and gently diffused upward is enough. If you want more drama, layering a deeper tone at the outer corner and blending it into the crease while your eye is closed keeps the depth visible once your eye opens. A detailed walk-through of the best eyeshadow placement for deep set hooded eyes breaks down the angles and brush choices for anyone who wants a closer guide.

The reason this works is that it places contrast where the light naturally hits, lifting the appearance of the lid and pulling focus away from the fold. Blake's team has used variations of this on red carpets from Cannes to the Met Gala, and the same logic applies whether you're heading to a summer barbecue in December or a winter wedding in July.

Eyeliner tricks that work with a fold

Eyeliner is where most hooded-eye routines fall apart. A thick wing looks perfect when your eye is closed, then disappears under the fold the moment you open up. Blake's team tends to favour a thin, tight line along the upper lashes with a small wing that lifts outward at the outer corner, drawn at an angle that sits above the fold rather than into it.

For everyday wear, a soft brown or grey pencil smudged along the lash line adds definition without weight. For more polished looks, a liquid or gel liner drawn in short, connected dashes keeps the line crisp and even. Tightlining, where the liner sits between the lashes rather than above them, adds fullness to the lash line without adding visible thickness to the lid.

This table is a useful starting point before you commit to a particular look, especially because the "works well" column is what Blake's team gravitates toward on most days. The opposite column collects the habits that look dramatic in the mirror but tend to smudge, transfer or disappear once the lid settles.

Lash and brow framing choices

Lashes do a lot of heavy lifting on a hooded eye. Blake often wears lash extensions or a few individual clusters along the outer corners, which adds length exactly where the lid starts to fold. For everyday wear, a heated curler held at the base of the lashes for ten seconds, followed by a lengthening mascara, gives a similar effect without the maintenance.

A lengthening formula with a thin, slightly curved wand works better than volumising mascaras that add bulk to the lashes and weigh them down. Brands available through Sephora Australia and Mecca, including many local options, offer this kind of wand. The goal is curl and length, not density, because dense lashes on a hooded eye can droop and brush against the brow.

Brows matter just as much. A softly arched brow with a full body and a clean tail balances the fold and gives the eye a frame. Over-plucked or overly thin brows tend to exaggerate the hood by making the eye area feel heavier. Blake's brows have stayed full and gently arched throughout her career, and her team fills them in with hair-like strokes rather than a solid block of colour.

Building your own hooded-eye routine

Putting all of this into a single routine is easier than it sounds. The aim is to build a small, repeatable set of habits that work for your specific lid rather than copying Blake's exact steps.

• Curl your lashes before any mascara and choose a lengthening formula over a volumising one to keep the curl.
• Place a satin shadow across the mobile lid and blend upward, not into the crease, so the colour stays visible.
• Tightline the upper lashes with a soft brown or charcoal pencil rather than drawing a thick line across the lid.
• Fill brows with light, hair-like strokes and keep the tail defined, avoiding the temptation to over-shape.
• Use a primer that grips the lid before any powder shadow, especially during a humid Australian summer.
• Skip heavy kohl on the lower waterline; a bronze or taupe smudge is more flattering and stays put longer.
• Store your eye products somewhere cool and dry, since Australian summers can soften wax-based liners and bend brush bristles.

Each of these small adjustments adds up to a more balanced eye area that holds up through long days, summer humidity and the camera flash that always seems to arrive at the worst moment.

Pick one tip from this guide and live with it for a fortnight before adding the next one. Your eye shape won't change, but the way it photographs, the way it reads across a dim restaurant, and the way it feels at the end of a long day in the heat will all improve. Blake Lively's beauty team has spent years perfecting the same approach, and the results speak for themselves in every red carpet gallery.