The Real Makeup Artists

There was a time when being a makeup artist meant more than just knowing how to blend foundation. It was about artistry, vision, and pushing boundaries. The real makeup artists - legends like Kevyn Aucoin, Pat McGrath, and Sam Fine, weren’t just creating looks…they were redefining beauty. These are the kind of artists that inspired me when I started my journey over 20 years ago. They taught artists such as myself that makeup isn’t just about makeup….it’s about everything around you.

They weren’t scrolling through Instagram to copy another artist’s work. They were out there researching, collecting references from art, history, nature, music, and culture. They made mood boards filled with textures, fabrics, and paintings, things that spiked their creativity rather than just another makeup look to replicate or a pinterest board with other peoples work as reference. Their work had DNA. You could look at a face and know exactly who was behind it because their artistry was that distinct.

I genuinly feel like makeup back then was like storytelling. It was about understanding bone structure, playing with textures, and knowing how to manipulate light and shadow to create illusions (not just drawing stripes across the face). These artists had a deep understanding of their craft - they didn’t rely on trending techniques to dictate their work. Instead, they dictated the trends - which were never ridiculous ones such as using a fork to contour your nose 🙄.

Kevyn Aucoin transformed faces with his sculptural approach to makeup, turning supermodels and celebrities into icons with a few strokes. Sam Fine perfected the art of enhancing deep skin tones in ways the industry had ignored for so long which paved the way for inclusivity before people were even talking about it. And Pat McGrath? She was….and still is - the woman who takes makeup beyond beauty, treating it like pure fashion, like a performance, like an art piece on skin.

But today it’s the copy-paste culture. Everyone is obsessed with perfection. Flawless skin, a lifted fox eye, the same overlined lips on every face. Makeup seems to have become a uniform rather than an expression. It’s rare to see a look and feel something, to be surprised or inspired. It’s all about creating something wearable rather than something interesting. Everyone is aiming to go viral, so creativity is basically being sacrificed for trends, because what matters more to them is guaranteed likes and follows.

The new generation of makeup artists seems more focused on getting their work to go viral rather than creating something that tells a story. There’s no sense of personal identity in most of what we see today. It’s just regurgitated looks, recycled over and over with different models but the same exact makeup look. A lot of today’s artists are trained to perfect one look…the snatched, symmetrical, filtered aesthetic - but take them out of that comfort zone, and then see what happens. Ask them to create a look inspired by a 1920s flapper, a surrealist painting, or even just raw emotion, and they wouldn’t know where to start.

Don’t get me wrong - although I’m talking about the majority, it’s not everybody. There are still those who approach their work like the OG makeup artists. The ones who understand that makeup is more than just aesthetics - it’s an extension of creativity, emotion, of something a little deeper. And when one of the OG’s decides to show everyone how it’s really done, we all take a moment to appreciate it. For example…Pat McGrath’s glass skin moment at the Maison Margiela show. The way she transformed skin into something ethereal, almost liquid-like…THAT was artistry. It was about creating an illusion and a mood. It’s those moments that remind us what makeup artistry is truly about.

I can’t help but wonder if we’ll ever get back to that era of creative freedom? Or are we stuck in this endless loop of ‘clean girl aesthetic’ and AI-generated makeup trends? Who knows. But what I do know is that I feel truly blessed to have started my makeup artistry journey during the rise of the real ones, the true visionaries.

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