Who Invited Makeup Who Was The World's First Makeup Artist

Function of an ongoing series of 29Secrets stories, taking a deep dive into the history of legendary beauty products and iconic fashion moments…

By Christopher Turner
Illustration by Michael Hak

Throughout his brusque career, Kevyn Aucoin painted the faces of some of the globe's most famous women, worked on endless style magazine covers, and authored 3 bestselling books on dazzler (The Art of Makeup in 1994, Making Faces in 1997 and Face Forwards in 2000) – all of which earned him the nickname the "Michelangelo of maquillage." As the makeup artist wholly responsible for the "sculpted" look of many celebrities and top models, and for introducing makeup contouring to the general public, he truly changed the beauty industry.

Described by friends and celebrities as "teddy carry-like," the 6-foot, 4-inch Aucoin was outspoken about variety, gay rights, gun control and race relations. In October 2000, 2 years before his death, he told Time magazine, "If all it says on my gravestone is 'DID GOOD LIPSTICK,' I'd rather it say null at all."

His story is inspiring, and heartbreaking. Read on for more than on the most celebrated makeup artist of his fourth dimension.

Valentine'southward Day baby
The twenty-four hour period Aucoin was born in Shreveport, Louisiana – Feb fourteen, 1962 – "was my all-time Valentine ever," recalled Thelma Aucoin, who adopted him one month subsequently. He was the offset of four children the Aucoins adopted because they could not accept biological children.

Aucoin ofttimes said he knew he was gay from the age of half dozen. In The Art of Makeup, he wrote that his mother "even allow me buy a pair of lime-green, patent-leather penny loafers with gold buckles." He wore them to school every day – until his father found them and threw them away.

As a child, he was effeminate, loved Faddy magazine and all fashion magazines, blasted Barbra Streisand and was completely fascinated by makeup. He was relentlessly targeted past bullies for much of his childhood but, despite this arduousness, his passion for makeup always prevailed. He borrowed makeup creative person Style Swap's 1977 instruction transmission entitled Designing Your Face: An Illustrated Guide to Cosmetics from the local public library (failing to ever return it), and increasingly saw concrete transformation through makeup equally his way out of small-boondocks life, once saying: "If I could just make things expect better, things would be better."

Aucoin started stealing makeup from local stores, as he was likewise embarrassed to purchase. Then he would then spend hours practising makeup application techniques and transforming his younger sister Carla to look similar a model (he gave his first makeover when he was eleven and she was five). At age 15, he dropped out of high schoolhouse later two classmates tried to run him over with a automobile. Shortly after, he enrolled in cosmetology schoolhouse – and it wasn't long before he surpassed his teacher'south abilities and began teaching the classes himself.

Perhaps it was his perception of his own advent that made Aucoin such an empathetic makeup artist. "I got called ugly most of my babyhood," he would later say. "I was told I was ugly constantly."

Bright lights, big metropolis
In 1982, Aucoin met Jed Root, with whom he moved first to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, then on to New York City. Hoping to get noticed, Aucoin did pro bono makeup on models for examination shoots (ane of his early canvasses was '80s supermodel Paulina Porizkova). His almost daring stunt to get noticed was arguably when he dressed Root equally his agent in a adapt from the Salvation Army, and the two of them brought his portfolio to the offices of Vogue. "He would but plant himself in front of me," recalled Linda Wells, an editorial banana at Vogue's beauty department at the time. "He was more passionate and more obsessed than whatever other person I've met in my life."

Viii months later on moving to Manhattan (where he spent his first winter in an unheated Hell'south Kitchen walk-up), Aucoin got his big break when he was booked to do Meg Tilly's makeup for a spread in Faddy, which would be shot past acclaimed fashion photographer Steven Meisel.

In 1986, Vogue'southward sittings editor Polly Mellen booked him for a cover shoot that would be shot by the legendary fashion photographer Richard Avedon. The virtually unknown model was immature, with bombshell brunette hair, pillowy lips, and what was to get her signature beauty marking…a young Cindy Crawford. This cover – and, more specifically, Crawford'due south meticulously painted face – pushed Aucoin'due south career into gear.

"It was such a big deal for both of us. We worked together a lot afterward that. If I worked 5 days in a calendar week, 3 or iv of them were with Kevyn," Crawford recalled years later.

Over the next three years, Aucoin did the makeup for 18 American Vogue covers besides as numerous covers for other fashion magazines, including Harper'due south Bazaar and Cosmopolitan. In fact, between 1987 and 1989, he did ix Vogue covers in a row as well as seven Cosmopolitan covers. He was part of a movement that pushed mode into the mainstream in the early 1990s, and information technology was Aucoin who changed the manner high-profile models did their makeup, ultimately transforming Naomi Campbell, Kate Moss, Christy Turlington, Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista and Paulina Porizkova into supermodels and cultural icons.

"I was not going to go to whatsoever other person but Kevyn's chair," Campbell said of working with him, adding that he was the just makeup artist in town who understood Black skin. Of collaborating with Aucoin on shoots with photographers Steven Meisel, Irving Penn and Francesco Scavullo, Evangelista explained: "Magic didn't happen on the prepare – it happened in the dressing room, in front of the mirror, with Kevyn."

It wasn't just the supermodels who had Aucoin on speed dial. Every bit he began to divide his time betwixt New York and Los Angeles, he quickly grew a celebrity client roster that included Madonna, Cher, Courtney Love, Janet Jackson, Whitney Houston, Gwyneth Paltrow, Liza Minnelli, Isabella Rossellini, Sarah Jessica Parker, Barbra Streisand and Tina Turner. He almost single-handedly created the category of celebrity makeup artist.

"Kevyn was ahead of his fourth dimension – [he] somehow gravitated toward celebrities," explained famed hairstylist Orlando Pita of the makeup artist's game-changing instinct to build relationships with Hollywood icons and pioneer the manufacture'south scarlet-carpet culture.

By the mid-'90s, Aucoin dominated the beauty manufacture and had become a household proper name – all before he ever had a namesake brand, which he eventually launched in 2001.

Cher in one case recalled walking into beauty shop Make Up For E'er with Aucoin: "It was like Brad Pitt walked in."

At his height, he would oft be booked months in advance, and he could command as much as $vi,000 for a single makeup session.

He appeared in countless interviews on The Oprah Winfrey Show, made regular appearances on CNN and MTV, and could be spotted backstage at the Academy Awards. Years later, he played himself in Zoolander (2001) and the infamous Sex And The City mode testify episode where Carrie falls on the runway.

Irresolute faces, starting trends and the introduction of contouring
Aucoin's legacy was his ability to changes faces with makeup and usher in some of the biggest beauty trends of the 1990s. One example: information technology was Aucoin who revived the 1920s pencil-sparse eyebrow trend (fabricated famous by Marlene Dietrich, Carole Lombard and Joan Crawford), when he rebelled against the minimalist grunge tendency and plucked the brows of a host of supermodels at an Isaac Mizrahi runway prove in the '90s. "He decided that everyone needed to look like Carole Lombard and have really skinny eyebrows," said Mizrahi. Information technology was a radical motility – Cindy Crawford's agent threatened to sue. "Information technology was a existent crisis for her career," Mizrahi recalled. "But and then she started getting more jobs considering she had skinny eyebrows. So everybody started tweezing their eyebrows! Kevyn invented and then many things that we look at today as just stuff that exists. He was a completely brilliant experimental chance-taker."

Skinny brows weren't the only one of Aucoin's moves to alter the confront of fashion: he was besides a pioneer of the makeup tutorial. Today, YouTube and Instagram are filled with countless makeup artists sharing their tips on how to go the perfect smoky center, but before the internet Aucoin was really the but i sharing his wisdom. After years of high-profile Voguecovers, runway shows and endless editorial shoots, he released a serial of java table books, each sharing his makeup tips and tricks. In the first, 1994's The Art of Makeup, Aucoin used merely his brushes to plow a 50-something Martha Stewart into a dead ringer for 1940s femme fatale Veronica Lake, and transformed his own 66-year-old female parent into Marlene Dietrich. "This was the first time that you really saw those kind of makeover books," co-ordinate to makeup artist Lisa Eldridge. "The transformations were mind-bravado."

But, ultimately, Aucoin's legacy will exist taking makeup sculpting mainstream and introducing makeup contouring to the everyday woman.

Long before YouTube makeup tutorials showed how to employ calorie-free and dark pencils to accentuate shadows and highlights, and long before Kim Kardashian started selling contour kits to the masses, Aucoin was blending backstage, using lines to thin out a nose or heave the cheekbone. Then, in his most popular book, 1997'southward Making Faces, he began to evidence readers how to profile, and displayed the techniques needed to create different looks. At that place's a reason why it's often referred to as the beauty bible.

Just Aucoin didn't cease there. In October 2000, he published his manufacture-defining cosmetics book, Face up Forward, which became a New York Times bestseller. The book was widely noted for introducing makeup sculpting and contouring to the general public.

Kardashian'due south makeup artist Mario Dedivanovic, who these days is regularly credited every bit the king of contouring, defers to Aucoin…rightfully so. "Kevyn was the offset i to put that out for the world to see," he says.

Aucoin was also 1 of the first makeup artists to champion diversity in the beauty industry, starting in 1983 when he was made a creative director at Revlon and pushed to create a line of foundations chosen The Nakeds. It was a revolutionary moment in makeup as the shades in this line catered to all skin tones, something that wasn't the norm.

In the years that followed, he was courted by MAC, Vincent Longo, Laura Mercier and Shiseido to interact.

In 2001, he launched his own makeup drove, Kevyn Aucoin Dazzler. Many of the products in the collection have since achieved cult status: in fact, his Sensual Skin Enhancer, Neo-Highlighter and Sculpting Profile Powder are nevertheless sell-out products in today'southward saturated markets.

He anticipated 24/7 social media
I of the most interesting things nearly Aucoin was his coercion to certificate his every motility. He was obsessed with a abiding self-documentation: his daily video diaries, a habit that began in his teens, ranged from staged skits and mockumentary news videos to behind-the-scenes footage of his makeup sessions with the world's most famous women. He recorded and kept everything, including answering machine cassettes and videotapes, and created meticulous scrapbook collages of his Polaroids, appointment book pages and notes.

In 2018, years later on his decease, a feature documentary titled Larger Than Life: The Kevyn Aucoin Story striking screens, chronicling the boggling life of the first celebrity makeup creative person. Directed by Tiffany Bartok, the film relied heavily on Aucoin'southward detailed video diaries, complemented by countless celebrity interviews singing his praises.

"Maybe this film is the signal, merely when Kevyn was shooting [his daily video diaries], who knows what he was thinking? He was but documenting, documenting, documenting…. It is like a time capsule to be able to wait back and see those moments…what kids we all were," Cindy Crawford reflects in the documentary.

His decease
Aucoin's tragic death in May 2002 was at first attributed to a metabolic disorder, but shortly afterwards details began to surface that suggested it was actually a severe habit to painkillers that killed him. That was later confirmed past a coroner's ruling.

In September 2001, after having increasing amounts of back pain and headaches, Aucoin was diagnosed with a tumour on his pituitary gland. He had been suffering for much of his life from acromegaly because of this neoplasm, but information technology had gone undiagnosed. The tumour meant that the brain connected secreting growth hormones long afterwards his teenage years. In fact, during the last five years of his life, Aucoin grew 2 inches and went up 2 shoe sizes. Shortly after his diagnosis, he underwent a successful surgery and had the tumour removed, just he continued to experience pain. To ease his concrete and mental suffering, he began taking increasing amounts of prescription and non-prescription painkillers, including Vicodin, Lorcet, Xanax and Soma.

Aucoin'southward partner, Jeremy Antunes (whom he began dating in 1999, married in an unofficial ceremony in Hawaii in 2000 and thereafter referred to as his husband), implored Aucoin to get aid. But while Aucoin tried to recover, he could non entirely stop his drug utilize. Antunes went to Paris for a week to be solitary, and in that time, Aucoin became ill and was hospitalized at Westchester Medical Centre in Valhalla, New York. He died on May 7, 2002, of kidney and liver failure due to acetaminophen toxicity caused by prescription painkillers.

The fact that Antunes left Aucoin for what became the last calendar week of his life created antagonism between Aucoin's family and Antunes, resulting in Antunes beingness locked out of the home he shared with Aucoin. Despite Aucoin's instructions that his ashes be scattered in Hawaii where he was married, the family had his remains buried with his female parent in Louisiana.

The beauty and style manufacture was devastated by the loss. The industry too has never seen or celebrated a makeup creative person the aforementioned way it has Aucoin. Naomi Campbell perhaps put it best when she reflected, "There will never be some other Kevyn Aucoin. Never. Never. Never."