For the past 15-ish years, I’ve been a diehard Chanel mascara stan (well before the word ‘stan’ entered my vernacular, clearly). With a brief stop off in Tarte land, I’ve virtually exclusively used Chanel Inimitable Intense mascara to make my lashes pop day in and day out—so it took a lot to get me to buy a non-Chanel mascara.

What persuaded me so suddenly? TikTok, of course, what else? Whilst infinity scrolling into the night, my FYP presented me with a set of eyelashes the likes of which I’d never seen. My description won’t do this justice, so I’ll just share the video here:

I was so distracted by these literally perfect eyelashes that I almost missed how cute the message of this video was. Anyway—I wasn’t the only one, apparently, because the creator of this video pinned a comment sharing the mascara brand: Lancôme’s Monsieur Big (and nearly 30K people liked that comment alone!).

Obviously, I (metaphorically) sprinted to my Sephora app to check this stuff out. I had Monsieur Big in my cart within roughly 30 seconds.

TIP

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Lancôme Monsieur Big Volumizing Mascara — $27.00

Two days later, I was testing it out for myself, and… wow. The formula is pretty wet, but I think all mascaras are at the beginning when you do those first few swipes. The brush is also very different from my go-to Chanel. While the brush for my everyday mascara is fine, firm, and comb-like, Lancôme’s is big, fluffy, and brush-like—like a spoolie, actually.

The formula is buildable, and once I navigated the brush and became more familiar with the texture, I was able to build without too much clumpiness (this might just be a me thing, but I think there’s a learning curve with new products and formulations). And though it is, in fact, buildable, there’s not a whole lot of building to do, to be honest. The effect is instant, and it’s bold. “Monsieur Big” is a particularly accurate title for this wow-factor mascara.

What I loved the most about this was that while it did make my lashes BIG (huge, even), they were still defined and separated, so I wasn’t left with that tarantula-lash effect that some dramatic mascaras can give. It also left my lashes feeling soft and pliable instead of hard and crunchy. So many wins!

At $27, I personally felt like this wasn’t too expensive, especially for being a luxury-tier product (for reference, Chantecaille and Sisely both make mascaras over seventy dollars—that’s another conversation for another day).

All in all, this is a legendary mascara that got me to take a break from my decade-and-a-half relationship with my favorite (Perhaps now it is an open relationship). And of all the things TikTok made me buy during the pandemic, this is definitely in the top five.

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