Mettre En Valeur: Jean Harlow

Friday, April 8, 2011

Beauty Icons of the 1930s - Greta Garbo, Jean Harlow, Marlene Dietrich

Greta Garbo

In America, the 1930s were marked by the economic crisis which led to the unemployment and financial ruin of many. In Europe, by fascism and Nazism. These were hard times, so you can imagine how more and more people turned towards the Cinema to momentarily escape reality.

Alas, the very young Jean Harlow enters the picture. She creates quite a stir as the very first Hollywood star to emerge with platinum blond hair.

Jean Harlow

Her admirers are delighted and attempt to copy her look to the peril of their own hair.
Her eyebrows are shaved and redrawn in a very fine semi-circular line that drags down at the end.
The eyes are enhanced by heavy false lashes and the lips completely redrawn in the shape of a heart and coloured in a very dark red.
The picture I've enclosed is black and white so you're going to have to take my word for it. ;) (well mine, and wikipedia's anyway)

Jean Harlow - notice the shaved and redrawn eyebrows

Another very influential icon that emerges in this decade was Marlene Dietrich - her fans go as far as waxing their foreheads and pulling out their wisdom teeth to recreate the wide forehead and hollow cheeks of this beauty.

Marlene Dietrich

As you can see, this German beauty also had her eyebrows shaved and very thinly redrawn in the same semi-circular line. But what made Marlene Dietrich stand out, was the almost architectural facial bone structure that was unique to her.
These women were seductive, provocative, they became known as the FEMME FATALES.

I've also included a FANTASTIC Marlene Dietrich tutorial by Pixiwoo.
This look is important to know well because as Sam says in the video: "if you're a makeup artist, it will be referenced to you time and time again."

Saturday, January 29, 2011

Get to know your Beauty Icons

First assignment as Make-up Artists-to-be (as per my teacher) is to get to know the
beauty icons of past and present so that when used as reference points, you don't fall into panic mode and excuse yourself to the nearest bathroom stall to secretly google/wiki said reference on your smartphone-du-jour.
Makes sense right? But, like everything else of great value, easier said than done.
At first i thought to myself: piece of cake. I mean, there can't be that many icons I don't know about and plus, time flies when you learn interesting things. But then I opened the book and guess where it begins?

- The 1950s you say?
- Try again.
- The 20s?
- Nope.
- The Medieval times?
- You're getting warmer
- Eve?
- The same Eve that took a bite out of the apple? I'm impressed you would go that far back but NO!
- You are now thinking to yourself: "Surely not B.C."?
- As in BEFORE CHRIST? And right you would be! In fact, try 4000 years B.C..

Eh oui, that's how far my teacher wants us to venture out and venture we will.
I promise I'll cover them all in more detail but here's a sneak peak in case you wanted to search for them yourself:

Egypt 4000 B.C
Cleopatra