A Guide to Wispy Lash Mapping & Styling

Wispy Lash styles are taking the industry by storm. You may have heard of the Kim K style which popped up in 2018 and hasn’t gone anywhere since, you may have even heard of super textured Wet Look lashes, and now Angel Lashes, which are the latest trend to grace the lash extensions world. So, what are they, and how do you map them?

Quick History

Russian Volume lashes were characterised by a super neat, extremely even top line which was created by dropping down 1 mm as you went up each lash layer. Let’s say in your lash map you had a section that was 12 mm; on the bottom layer you’d use 12 mm lashes, then on the middle layer you’d use 11 mm lashes, and on the top layer you’d use 10 mm lashes. That means that when your client opens their eye, they have a super even top-line without a single lash or fan out of place.

As volume techniques spread across the globe, a slightly messier, more texturised style came to be more popular with our friends across the pond, which came to be known as Hollywood Volume. This didn’t have the same rigid styling when it came to top lines, and was a little more of a natural finish. 

These days, the name Russian Volume tends to be a bit of a catch-all name for any volume, and lashes with a lot more texture are known as Wispy Volume or more commonly, Wispy Lashes. 

Style 1: Kim K 

Kim K Lashes were arguably the first type of wispy lashes that burst onto the scene, though we can’t entirely discredit Hollywood Lashes, which were the USA’s more rebellious version of the super neat Russian Volume lashes that were a little bit more standard at the time. 

A Kim K look is essentially that quite even top line with some added spikes throughout the set at regular intervals. The spikes tend to be 2-3 mm longer than the fans in the set, and are usually added to the top and bottom layers, so that a spike remains even if the natural lash on one layer grows out. 

You can turn any lash map into a Kim K set simply by adding some spikes throughout each section in your map. Pretty simple!

Wet Look Lashes

Wet Look Lashes break all of the rules of volume extensions. Instead of opening up your fans to be fluffy and light, you’ve aiming for closed fans that stay in little spikes and give loads of texture. For this style, we’d recommend tearing up the rule book a little bit more and ignoring the fact that lashes grow in layers – for an even more textured look you can even do the reverse of the Russian Volume technique, and add a mm for each layer you go up. This will give you a really dense bottom section and a lighter top, adding a dense eyeliner effect to the lash set. 

With a Wet Look, you do run the risk of there being gaps in the set if your client has gaps in their lashes. To combat this, you can go ahead and open up some of those fans to add a bit of fluff into the set and just add a different kind of texture. If you’re pressed for time, try using Premade Volume Fans instead of making them by hand – they’re made from the same fibre as our Mayfair Lashes (which makes them vegan friendly and cruelty free) so you may even find them very familiar to work with right away! 

If you’re a little unsure as to how to create spikes, we recommend getting a little drop of Primer on a Micro Brush, dabbing off the excess, and then just running that along the tips of your volume lashes. 

One last tip – as you’re not opening the fans you need to consider that they have a much smaller centre of gravity than an open fan, and as such may appear to weigh the natural lashes down a little more. To combat this, we recommend using thinner lashes than you would for open fans of the same size, for example you may use 0.07 for your normal 5D volume sets but for a Wet Look with closed fans which also uses 5 lashes in each fan, opt for 0.05 Mayfair Lashes instead.

Style 3: Angel Lashes

If there’s one thing we love it’s a brand new style to learn about. Angel Lashes have just started popping up all over our beauty timelines and we love them just as much. In essence, they’re a very lightweight form of Wet Look lashes, using closed fans but with finer lashes and much smaller fans in general. 

If you were creating a Wet Look with 0.05 lashes and you were putting 5D lashes in each spike, for Angel Lashes you’d be opting for 0.05 (or even finer) and just 2D closed fans. Like with a Wet Look, you can add some extra fluff with opened fans, but we’d recommend 3-4D fans with very fine lashes to add the lightest touch of fluff. With angel lashes, anything you do should be very lightweight and very fluffy – think cloud!