Vogue Staffers Pick the Best Mascara

By Ana Dragovic, Vogue magazine

In an effort to help his sister, Mabel, win the heart of her paramour, the Chicago-based cosmetic chemist T.L. Williams created a lash-darkening mixture of Vaseline and carbon dust in 1913. When the impromptu concoction became a local hit, he founded a cosmetics company, named it Maybelline and, a few years later, the country's first cake mascara was officially born. The rest may be history-but there's nothing old-fashioned about today's high-tech formulas and their accompanying wands. From Lancôme's triple-patented brush to Lash Control's squeezable precision tube, the season's best mascaras are triumphs of architecture and ingenuity. To that end, we asked Vogue's most lash-obsessed editors to put them to the test. Here, their fall guide to what plumps, lengthens, refines, and lasts.