Friday, 3 October 2008

Manish, or How I Started The Day Shitting My Pants!



30 September. Manish Arora.

I wasn't supposed to be on this show but I welcomed the change. I was having the chance to work with Kabuki again. For those of you who don't know him, Kabuki is, apart from a better phrasing, a fucking genius! He was one of the original club kids of NY, he done modeling for Tierry Mugler, he started his make up job in Sex and the City and now he is one of the most respected make up artists for his vision, creativity and talent. Besides all of this, he is the sweetest person ever and great to work with!

The show was at the Cirque D'Hiver, where I had done McQueen a couple of years ago. When he started the demo, I was like "I'm going home. I'm done!". 19 girls to do and all of them with a different look. The only common thing was the foundation and the lip. Just the foundation alone was making me shiver. If you ever tried to paint a face white, you know that what you see is not what you get. When you take a picture of it, you normally see that there are blotches of coverage that are not seen when you look at it with just your eyes. This means that you have to work in layers and be very precise on what you are doing. Second of all, every girl had a different thing that had to be glued to the face, which went from eye masks to velvet templates that were mixed with eyeshadow blends to create a Daliesque illusion of perspective and depth. None of us knew exactly what we were doing and each girl that came along was a Russian roulette of make up. For every girl we needed a particular brief and, obviously, this took time. All of this with the notion that, once you begin this make up, you cannot go wrong or you have to take it all off and start again. Stress, anyone?!


The clothes were pure Manish! An OTT mash of colours, patterns and textures that, unbelievably... works! I guess you can say that the theme was circus. I mean, I did see a carousel skirt. Yes, a skirt that was a real carousel that rotated and all! It was fun, it was colourful and a joy to do.

Four hours later, the show was over, everybody was happy and I was feeling quite proud of my make up abilities. Me loves me a bit of a challenge!
Kabuki is hitting Europe later this year and the beginning of 09 for some masterclasses with MAC. Catch him if you can because he is worth it!!
Have a look

3 comments:

Graven said...

Visage from the Fade to Gray album cover with an overload of glitter or Bowie from the Ashes to Ashes video! Fuckin' Fab!

Mushroomdeluxe said...

nice work boy!
I am proud!!!!

P.A. said...

Cheers, my dears!! :)