Tom Ford Deeper (01) Eye Defining Pencil Pen ($55.00) is a double-ended liquid eyeliner with a calligraphy brush on one end and a squatter, thicker felt-tip on the other. It’s a very deep black (and frustratingly, I still can’t get my black liquid eyeliners to really photograph as black as they are–they always turn brown-ish), but I can assure it is an incredibly rich, deep dark black.

The calligraphy brush is amazing; it makes applying liquid eyeliner a breeze, and you can achieve such thin, precise lines with hardly any pressure. The brush is nicely saturated, so it doesn’t skip or drag while applying, so you can get crisp, opaque line. The calligraphy brush is capable of thicker lines, but it excels at the thin lines in particular.  The formula is very wet, and it takes a few seconds to dry down and set.

The felt-tip side can create thicker lines while still applying with continuous flow across the skin–no dragging or skipping. In the swatch, you can see the eyeliner bled outside the original line, compared with the calligraphy brush as an applicator, which delivered an equally thick line but no bleeding. Sometimes, this can occur when swatched, but the actual performance on the eyelid is better, which was the case here (same thing happened with Hourglass Jett).  The actual liquid eyeliner, regardless of which applicator is used, lasted ten hours on me without flaking or smudging. It removed easily with my shu uemura cleansing oil.

I haven’t tried it myself, but I have heard good things about Jesse’s Girl Liquid Eyeliner, which has an applicator that looks incredibly similar to the calligraphy brush end to this, so I’m definitely going to keep an eye out for that in stores and see how it compares, because I know that this price point is difficult to swallow. (And there are many stellar black liquid eyeliners on the market.)

Tom Ford Deeper (01) Eye Defining Pencil Pen

Tom Ford Deeper (01) Eye Defining Pencil Pen

Tom Ford Deeper (01) Eye Defining Pencil Pen

Tom Ford Deeper (01) Eye Defining Pencil Pen

Tom Ford Deeper (01) Eye Defining Pencil Pen (Calligraphy Brush)

Tom Ford Deeper (01) Eye Defining Pencil Pen (first two with Felt-Tip, third with Calligraphy Brush)