How to be beautiful: Liquid eyeliner

Everybody has a friend whose eyeliner is perpetually wonky. If you don't, you are that wonky-eyelinered friend. Don't feel bad. For every woman who has perfected smooth, symmetrical liquid liner, many more can blame the natural disadvantage of having very slightly differently shaped eyes, which means that while one eye goes like a dream, the second looks like it was preceded by a quarter bottle of gin. We're just not ambi-liners, and the choice between dodgy eyeliner and starting again is, at 7am, a no-brainer.

Although black liquid liner has long been a make-up bag basic, our application skills have come under particular scrutiny of late with a persistent emphasis on 1950s flicks and sharper, 1960s lines. Blame Mad Men.

This season, though, encouraging news. While the winter catwalks championed virtuoso application in the trend for delicate arcs drawn above the eye socket, clumsiness, too, had its place – models at Kinder Aggugini sported knowingly sketchy winged liner. Sadly, whichever you opt for, the consensus remains that it should look the same, or near enough, on each eye.