The packaging of NARS’ holiday collaboration with Steven Klein features images from the photographer’s greatest hits portfolio. In a photo from Klein’s 2007 Home Work series, Canadian model Liisa Winkler graces the “Tearjerker” eye set. It’s rather a subversive choice for a supermodel, let alone a makeup palette, given that as she poses doing dishes Winkler gazes blankly out, her face entirely obscured by a smooth, featureless mask. It’s also unsettling, like something out of Georges Franju’s 1960 body horror film Eyes Without a Face, which influenced featureless miens like John Carpenter’s slasher, Michael Myers.
That’s also how I used to think of Adele’s signature public persona – I admired the idea that since most people don’t really know what she looks like without the flawless hair and makeup mask, she could potentially nip out to the corner store virtually unnoticed. Like many other made-up female stars it seemed an ingenious decision that would allow them some modicum of off-stage anonymity. Celebrity Adele, the one with her face on, was a) that incredible voice and b) the overall effect of her signature retro look, with its thick arcuate of liquid eyeliner, bangs and bouffant ‘do evocative of Darling-era Julie Christie. Until she blew her cover in a recent issue of Rolling Stone.
The title of Adele’s story is “A Private Life,” and the photo shoot suggests we’ve accessed the superstar’s inner sanctum via backstage invitation – she has freshly-towelled hair and wears a bathrobe, and appears, seemingly, to be without a lick of makeup. I would never have recognized her, not even from the cupid’s bow or chin cleft, as our patron saint of broken hearts and winged liner.
At a time when larger-than-life image goes with stardom, the makeunder from glam artifice seems a calculated risk, especially for this notoriously private star (remember that for young son Angelo, Adele kept even his name private for months). Here, she’s meant to be Adele – not “Adele.” It goes in tandem with what she says of her songs on the album 25 in the accompanying interview: She wants to be believed. That seems to be working, since the ever-growing fastest-sellingalbum– of-depends-on-what-day-you’re reading– this was a juggernaut from day one. In the same way, the singer has said she doesn’t want the new album to be thought of as a 1960s throwback, but a modern record.
Jennifer Lawrence goes barefaced as Katniss in The Hunger Games, suggesting realness and purity amongst decadence and corruption. There’s a similar moment in the movie Trumbo, when arch-conservative gossip columnist Hedda Hopper (the villain of the piece) is observed alone at home in hairnet and robe and without her signature face paint; even Hopper’s arched eyebrows seem to be missing in action. The scene implies vulnerability, if not compassion.
Makeup was a social evil in the Victorian era because it contradicted the narrow ideal of women and feminity as natural and artless. But artifice being what it is, there’s the hint of sleepless shadow under Adele’s eyes, making her enviable but relatable – and still gorgeous.
At the InStyle Awards last month, Kim Kardashian praised Charlotte Tilbury. She idolizes the celebrity makeup artist for sleeping in her makeup so that no one – not even her husband – sees what she really looks like. The anatomy of Tilbury’s day includes a 6 a.m. wakeup call and washing off her overnight makeup so she can apply it fresh. I admire that commitment (if not the dodgy skincare), too. She puts paid to the notion of “I Woke Up Like This.”
Amidst the glitz, glitter and intentionally gobby mascara there is the rise of the no-makeup makeup tutorial, which seems almost worse. The subject is makeup artist (and YouTube star) Lisa Eldridge’s second most popular instructional video. And, at its heart, it is no more authentic than Tilbury’s glamazon more-is-moreness: gloriously fake but at least honest about it, as fake as sequins and tinsel and the faceted mirrors of her new London beauty boutique. The decor is drippingly Art Deco-meets-disco like the ceilings at Paris Chez Régine, ground zero of 1970s hedonism.
No-makeup makeup – highlighting, contouring and other optical illusions, carefully applied BB creams, sheer and barely-there formulas – is the try-hard that doesn’t look it, a cosmetics version of sprezzatura. Which may, in fact, be Italian for bullshit.