With makeup, it’s that old, tragic cycle. You see it, you fall in love, maybe you wait and save up and build a beautiful house for it to come home to. Finally, you get to use it. And use it and use it. Until you’re about halfway through it, and then suddenly, something changes. You lose a little bit of interest. Let’s say, for argument’s sake, it’s a cocoa eye shadow. It’s lost some its richness and the packaging is a little dirty. On top off that, you’ve got your eye on something else: the newest, better, state-of-the-art cocoa shadow. The cocoa to end all cocoas. The fact of the matter is that you’re thinking about moving on to another cocoa. Breakup with the original cocoa is imminent.

Don’t do it. Your old cocoa still has so much life to live and love to give. You just need someone to show you how to love again. You need a third party to help you see your cocoa in a new light. No, it’s not me. I’m just making the introduction. You need Rae Morris.

She’s a professional. She’s a beauty legend in her own time, and served as a L’Oréal Beauty Expert for 10 years. She’s written the book (literally, and several) on beauty. And her solution to makeup disillusionment is not more makeup. It’s brushes.

Here’s the thing: some brushes make makeup harder to do. Some can be either too precise, requiring so much blending that you’re better off doing it with your fingers. Some deposit too much pigment; some seem to just eat all the color themselves, leaving you with none. Rae knows this. And she’s taken countermeasures with her brushes.

In her magnetic sets, there are natural bristles for powder and synthetic for creams. Although it’s hard to resist using the mini kabuki for everything. All the kabukis really pick up and distribute pigments so evenly that you hardly even need to do that prefatory tap against the back of your hand to shake off excess powder. And they create washes (rather than stripes) of color—the two steps of “apply color and blend' are reduced to one sweeping stroke. And the bristles are the softest I’ve ever had. When you brush it over your face, you feel like Pocahontas standing atop that cliff, gorgeous hair and leaves whispering around her face.

Plus, they’re just downright fun. That bit about magnets I mentioned earlier means that, home one their magnetic plate, each brush stands at attention perfectly. It’s better organization through science. As beautiful as that Diptyque jar of brushes can look, it can also get crowded and difficult to find the little guys, and your clean and dirty brushes mingle. The magnetic stand offers clean separation— great for the person who doesn’t like different foods touching on their plates. And also subscribes to Architectural Digest.

But as much as the Rae Morris brushes have helped me reconnect with that old cocoa, I will say that I’m still going to use my fingers and hands for plenty. But I’ve learned that, maybe unlike Rae Morris’, my hands are decidedly not magic. And when it comes to treating my favorite product right, I need an intercessor. Thanks for keeping cocoa and I together, Rae. We’re very happy now.

—Trace Barnhill

Photographed by Tom Newton.