PHOTOGRAPHED BY SIMON EMMETT EXCLUSIVELY FOR STYLIST MAGAZINE

Above: Sculpted

“Smooth a creamy eye base over the entire lid,” says Garland. “Then, with a black eye pencil, trace the upper and lower lash lines, softening the line with your finger. Extend the black pencil from the outer corner, curve it around into the socket line and blur with a brush. Then sweep a taupe eyeshadow across the lid and up to the brow, pressing a deep-grey shade of shadow over the kohl arc. Finish with lashings of mascara.”

Double-wear Eyeshadow Base, £16, Estée Lauder; Contour Kohl in Jet Black, £4.38, L’Oréal Paris; Eyestudio Mono in Silken Taupe, £4.09, Maybelline New York; Pure Pigment in Android, £15.50, Illamasqua; Rouge Dior in Fantastic Plum, £22.50, Dior T-shirt, £220, Raquel Allegra; rings, from £30, Pandora Photography: Simon Emmett at CLM Make-up: Val Garland using L’Oréal Paris Hair: Lisa Laudat using L’Oréal Paris Casting Crème Gloss Stylist: Charlie Anderson at Naked Artists Nails: Marge Christodolou using L’Oréal Paris Color Riche Nail Collection Shot at Big Sky Studios

Flirt Mechanism

Eyes also reveal a lot about our emotions. I remember word being passed around the school playground that when someone is attracted to another, their pupils dilate. It’s all part of the mating game. And for a group of 13-year-old girls, it was the most exciting news imaginable – banishing the endless question of “Does he? Doesn’t he?” What has come to light since is that we actually tend to find those with dilated pupils more attractive. A recent experiment at Edinburgh University found that women who are ovulating are more attracted to men with large pupils as they strongly associate them with sexual interest.

Still, rather frustratingly for the human race, pupil dilation is not something that can be used at will. Depending on the light, pupils naturally dilate or contract to assist with vision, with mood lighting – dusky light schemes in restaurants, bars and even living rooms acting as cheats for manipulating the pupil size and therefore sending the message of attraction. Women’s pupils are also known to dilate when excited, with the biggest response coming from looking at pictures of babies, triggering a maternal instinct, and on looking at a picture of an appetising meal when hungry. Conversely, the pupils will contract when we feel angry or disgusted.

Laws of Symmetry

As an impressionable adolescent, it was kindly noted by some boys that my eyes were too far apart for me to be deemed kissable. It’s a comment that’s never really left me. And yet, a recent study has revealed wide eyes to be a positive aspect of beauty. In four experiments, researchers at the University of San Diego and the University of Toronto asked volunteers to make comparisons of attractiveness between multiple images of the same female face, which have been manipulated to display varying distances between the eyes and the eyes and mouth.

They discovered two ‘golden ratios’, one relating to length and one to width. The faces were judged as more attractive when the vertical distance between the eyes and mouth was approximately 36% of the face’s length and the horizontal distance between their eyes was roughly 46% of the face’s width. Strikingly, these results are in-keeping with the proportions of a globally average face, pointing to the fact that familiarity is key in identifying beauty.

The golden ratio is not only favoured in terms of genetics and beauty but, known as the divine proportion, it has also popped up throughout modern civilisation as a widely accepted facet of beauty. The ancient Egyptian pyramids, the Parthenon of Athens and in countless works of art (think da Vinci’s, The Last Supper) and great forms of architecture – even nature – are pervaded by a wide, rectangular shape. Professor Adrian Bejan of Duke University in the US puts this human obsession with the horizontal shape down to the ease of our eyes in scanning left to right which is five times faster than scanning vertically. It’s a result of our perceived world being a horizontal tableau – we quickly scan horizons and landscapes for danger and in the search for a mate, not from above or below.

How identical each eye is to the other is often hyped as a key sign of attractiveness. It’s a common feature of catwalk models and something Cheryl possesses. And again, it finds its root in genetics. Studies suggest symmetrical faces are attractive to both women and men, correlating with long-term mental performance and fewer genetic mutations. Achieving symmetry, however, is a genetic miracle – it takes billions of cell reproductions to pull off perfect symmetry, which is why it is such a powerful sign of genetic health.

Still, the true beauty of eyes is that no two pairs are ever the same. They are our most powerful physical tool, they speak for us (saying the things we wouldn’t dare), and subtly decode information about others, without us being conscious of it. What do we see in Cheryl’s beautiful eyes? Huge bundles of inner strength. And a woman in the prime of her life.

Cheryl Cole: fatal attraction