The style was Jerry Hall — the contoured cheeks and the contoured nose — and I just couldn't do it. I wasn't a painter-type makeup artist, and I couldn't figure out how to get it done. More than that, it was not makeup that I actually thought looks good. Then one day, I started doing it my own way.
For a cover of a magazine, I was working with was a young teen and made her look bronze-y and natural. I'll never forget, I showed it to a very famous makeup artist and he said, "You're never going to work if you can't do makeup the way everyone else does — you might as well just throw in your towel."
Well, I didn't throw in my towel. I went on another shoot and they let me do a similar look. Slowly, I started doing what made sense to me, and by that I mean just really simple makeup. A little concealer on a blemish, brushing up someone's beautiful bushy eyebrows, a dab of blush on the cheeks. I honed my style, which people would say was the "natural look." That, to me, was just colors that I saw naturally in people's skin.
And that's how I started doing makeup.
Bringing a New Style of Makeup to Fashion
After years of working, traveling, and doing all sorts of jobs, I got an agent and then I started getting paired with very famous photographers. Bruce Weber, Patrick Demarchelier — they really liked the style of makeup I did. I started to work my way up by working with better photographers and better magazines.
