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Celebrity Makeup Artist Margret Avery |
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For someone who never planned on
a career as a celebrity makeup artist, Margret Avery has done a good job
of becoming one of America’s most sought after artists. A very small
sample of her clients has included, Christy Turlington, Cindy Crawford,
Barbra Streisand, Isabella Rossellini, Annette Benning and Naomi
Campbell. Margret Avery has worked with some extraordinary photographers
including, Helmut Newton, Denis Piel, Herb Ritts, Eric Boman and Irving
Penn, to name but a few. She has worked with major brands such as,
L’Oreal, Max Factor and Revlon.
She says, “I never thought of having a career as a makeup artist first
and foremost. It never entered my mind.
I came to New York City from Ohio to go to college. I went to
Parsons School of Design and my major was fashion design.
I came from a lower middle class family in Ohio and there wasn’t any
money to put any of us six kids through college, so I had to put myself
through college. I had a partial scholarship the first year and then
full scholarships onward. I had to work a lot and at one point I had
three part-time jobs with a full load of school. At one of the part-time
jobs I met two guys who were aspiring photographers and they wanted to
keep taking my picture. I felt so free in New York and being able to
have this creative expression. Studying fashion design, I wore different
wigs and makeup and clothes every day and it was like a game to me. It
was a lot of fun. That is why they wanted to take my picture.
I however, am not
comfortable with that and I didn’t really enjoy it, so I would start to
grab fellow classmates and I would take them and I would transform them.
We had all of these pictures that we had finished together
and a fellow classmate suggested that I take the pictures and I
go to a magazine and show them what I could do, because I am actually
really good as a makeup artist.
I had never thought about that, so I thought okay I will do that. I
needed work. I needed yet another job during the summer, so, I was happy
to go anywhere and I went to a magazine and I showed them the pictures.
They hired me on the spot. I worked for the summer breaks from college
as a makeup artist.
When I finished
college I had two portfolios, I had a portfolio as a designer and one as
a makeup artist. I just didn’t know what to do, because I wasn’t feeling
one way or the other really. I was very tired, as you can only imagine.
I kept thinking about being a designer and sitting in a fluorescently
lit room and trying to be creative that was very difficult for me to
even think about. It would be like
sitting on my hands after having had a taste of working as a makeup
artist and getting on a plane and traveling, while doing different
assignments. Having this freedom of just being out in the world was very
appealing. I ended up getting a job at a hair salon as a makeup artist
and I just took it. I thought I am just going to take it and see what
happens.
The owner of the salon Andre would often ask me to do photoshoots with
him and Dwayne Michaels a great photographer. We had to get up early in
the wee hours of the morning and meet him somewhere at five am. I was
like okay (reminiscing in a dubious voice at the time of day) and I said
sure I will do it. It just kept snowballing and rolling in it and
rolling in it. It took on a life of its own and it was nothing that I
ever aspired to. It is nothing I ever thought about doing nor is it
anything I ever thought of doing for my life. It just came out of
circumstances and survival. I just kept going with it. I didn’t have an
agent for a long time initially and then I did get an agent. My very
first agent represented Helmut Newton, Herb Ritts and Denis Piel and all
of these great photographers and I worked with all of them. I ended up
with all of these great pictures. It started to transform my life and
all I could do was to hold on and to go for the ride. It was here we go.
I got to travel a lot and to meet so many interesting people. That is
how it ended up starting and growing for me without any preconceived
idea on my part at all.
When I was out on a photoshoot I would ask (others) how they got into
this business and everyone had a story about how they fell into it. It
is not like they were studying and they were aspiring to be…it just fell
somehow (she laughs lightly)
into it or someone suggested it or they were introduced to someone who
brought them in. That’s life just giving in a bit and surrendering to
where it takes you.
It became a career that I hadn’t planned on. Absolutely. There it was
and I wasn’t going to stop it. There are so many great opportunities and
there are so many amazing people that I was meeting (through) magazines
that I was working for and in high profile situations, why would I not
want to do this? Of course I wanted this experience and when one would
end another would begin. It was surreal. I barely had a chance to catch
my breath. I have so many great memories and a lot of beautiful pictures
to share, because of that.
I have discovered how hard the people work who are very, very
successful. Not everyone was born with silver dollars in their mouths
and just spinning it and spinning it and weaving it into more money. The
people that I have met are very dedicated and very driven. They have
visions of their next step? I found that very inspiring and I guess that
has affected me very deeply, because I also feel that way. I also feel
very driven and I feel very inspired on a daily basis to constantly and
continually create and to find new ways of expressing myself. For that I
am very grateful.
I have had a lot of amazing adventures. I met a lot of amazing people
and I worked with the best photographers ever in the world. There you
have it. I am still in it shockingly.”
Avery relates one
of those adventures from a time when she was working with photographer
Rico Pullman, “Rico Pullman and I worked with on a photoshoot in Denver,
Colorado for Harper’s Bazaar. He wanted to shoot winter coats and
clothes and everything on a mountaintop and we needed a helicopter to
get us to the top of this mountain. They kept saying to us the weather
is not going to be so great, there is a storm coming (she
repeats it for emphasis) and he said I don’t care, we’ll get up
there now, take the pictures and then we will get back down.
By the time they
got the entire crew, because you can only take so many people in a
helicopter, two people, two people, two people and by the time we got to
the top of the mountain the big clouds started coming in with the storm.
The next thing we know we heard the chopper coming back up the mountain
(she does the sound
effects of the helicopter and does them quite well!) and landing on
the mountain. (The pilot) said you guys have to get off of here now!
Rico and his assistant left first, because they had all of the camera
equipment and the stuff that needed to be safe. The (helicopter) took
them down and came back up and who was left? There was the model,
myself, a female hairdresser and the female editor. It was all women and
we tried to get all of us into the helicopter.
I will never
forget that the magazine editor was willing to be strapped physically to
the side of the helicopter just to be airlifted down, because we were
starting to be so scared. The storm was coming in big time and we were
hiding in a crater that we found on top of this mountain with the tarp
held over us. We didn’t know if lightening was going to start. We didn’t
know anything. It was very scary and very dark. God bless this man who
knew how to manage this helicopter. It was very dangerous for a
helicopter to do this. He came up. We tried, but the helicopter wouldn’t
keep her strapped, so she jumped off the helicopter and she just said,
go, go, go. He took us straight down to the road and then he went
straight back up to get her, so he could bring her to safety and he did
it.
I remember I was with the hairdresser Gaby Speckbacher and she and I are
still dear friends and she now lives in Germany. There we were on the
street. We had some of our equipment with us. We didn’t have any ID or
anything and no money, because who would have thought that this would
happen. We had to thumb a ride back to the hotel (she
laughs). We were lucky, because there was a little mini bus that
stopped and pulled over. It was a family that was on vacation. They were
so excited that we were on a photoshoot. They were just beside
themselves. They took us back to our hotel, so we got there in time for
dinner. Oh what a day.”
Margret Avery says she did a lot of work in particular with
photographers Denis Piel and David Seidner. With Piel they traveled a
lot and they did quite a bit of work for American Vogue.
She recalls, “Some of the days were very grueling, but in the end we got
these great pictures and everyone could take a big sigh of relief at the
end of the day, we did it we got through it. With David Seidner he was
very particular in his vision. He was greatly inspired by painters like
John Singer Sargent. When he came to the studio he would create a huge
storyboard with all of these pictures and of all of these painters whom
he loved. He wanted to recreate a lighting situation, as a photographer
that would complement the light that was in every painting. It was very
difficult to do and sometimes it would take him up to four days to get
the lighting right. That was a big expense for any magazine to do that
at that time.”
She makes the point that every photoshoot for every magazine is a
collaborative effort and it is important for the makeup artist and
hairstylist to listen very carefully to what the photographer wants.
In one particular photo session with David Seidner what he needed was
quite extraordinary and Margret Avery describes why and how she was up
to the task, “He needed me to make every single person man or woman look
like they had never been in the sun. I was okay, alright, I’ll do it. I
didn’t know how I was going to do it, but I said yes, sure. I found a
way to mix almost a clown white makeup. (I took) this lavender oil that
I made and sort of a natural, medium shade of foundation and I mixed it
altogether, so it was really, really, really thin. I had to put it on
someone’s skin and on their ears, neck, everywhere, hands, so it
couldn’t look anywhere on their body like they had been in the sun. It
didn’t look great to the naked eye, but between the lighting and this
makeup all of them looked like their skin was very, very creamy. That
was the end result and we got it. That was the point. It wasn’t HD like
we have in the present day when you can see every wrinkle and every pore
and it worked. He had very specific instructions for the hairdresser and
how the hair needed to be worn in place and everything. I had to come up
with a way to make the lips look stained. He was very specific about
what he wanted. He worked very closely with me and with the hairdresser
for every photograph.”
Continuing to talk about her work with David Seidner she says, “In the
end we did a lot of pictures for the Sunday New York Times Magazine and
in Vanity Fair. I was part of a team when he won the Alfred Eisenstaedt
Award for portraiture photography in Vanity Fair. We replicated photos
that looked like John Singer Sargent paintings.
I was very touched when he got up to accept the award and he thanked all
of us and his team. He mentioned us all by name. That was very rewarding
and comforting, because it is a team effort. When you work on a project
like that no one really gets all the work and the hours that are behind
a photograph like that. It is not a quick selfie, like in the present
day. It’s work.
People understand it (collaborating) in the film world. You think about
the film world and how the crew behind a film has to work so hard and
they are in horrible conditions and guess what, it is the same in
print.”
Where does Margret Avery find the reward or the personal satisfaction in
makeup artistry?
“When I make people feel great about themselves and make them look in a
way that they hadn’t thought about. Recently I worked with a young
French painter who has the most amazing hair. She is young and beautiful
and she doesn’t wear makeup, except for lipstick. We were taking her
photograph, so we had to do a few things and I taught her along the way
what I had done. It was very rewarding, because she wanted to know
everything and she wanted to learn. It made her feel great and better
about herself. She learned what to do when I would not be around to help
her out when she has a night out or an opening as an artist. I find that
very rewarding when I can help someone out and make them feel a little
more autonomous about how they can pull themselves together and when
they feel that they are looking their best on a day to day basis,” she
says.
Avery gets really enthusiastic when the conversation moves into a
discussion about skincare, “I am obsessed with skincare. I discuss it
all of the time with my clients. When I teach a private lesson to
someone about how to do their makeup they had better prepare for the
first twenty minutes or so to be discussing their skincare and what they
are doing. If your skin isn’t well taken care of no amount of makeup is
going to give you what you need or what you are looking for. I feel very
sensitive to the fact that all women want to have great skin. All men
want to have great skin. Men have been onboard now for quite a few years
and I would say in the last twenty years it has developed more and more
about (learning) the benefits of taking care of their skin and how much
cleaner they look and feel. It makes a difference.”
As for tips about caring for one’s skin, she offers up this, “I would
say be gentle. Everyone is so individual in their skincare needs that it
is very hard to be too broad sometimes. There are broad regimens in how
to care for your skin, but it is like having one size of a shoe that
fits all. There are a lot of shoes and a lot of different sizes.
Everybody has similarities in their skin, but they are all kind of
different. I try to hone in on someone’s specific (needs). For example
let’s suppose someone is suffering from an acne condition, there are a
lot of great products out in the world that I can recommend for an acne
condition. If it is cystic acne
that’s a different ball game. You may need a doctor. You may need some
kind of medication or injections or something to help take care of that
and to diminish the effects of it. That is why sometimes it is difficult
to have one answer to fit all.
Having said all of that, I believe in treating the skin very gently. I
grew up with very bad skin and I have acne rosacea now as an adult and
no one would ever guess, because I learned that less is more. The less
aggressive you are with your skin the better your skin looks. Most
people have a tendency to be overaggressive, overscrub, overclean,
overstimulate, overstimulate and when you overstimulate all sorts of
things start to happen. Then you need a different kind of cream or a
different kind of lotion or a different kind of doctor to take care of
that. In fact, if you just let your skin breathe and live and be itself
for a day or two and you don’t do anything to it, it repairs itself.
Then you just treat it very gently. I don’t believe in using a lot of
water on the skin to cleanse it.”
If you are a man and reading this, Margret Avery also works with men, “I
have worked with lots of men. Depending on the situation, as every job
is different and a couple of celebrities that I have worked with in the
print world have ended up hiring me to work with them when they have to
be on the red carpet or they are being interviewed on television or
whatever. I have done that for years for a couple of different clients.”
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In
that position I ended up meeting a lot of people like Grace Jones, one
of the names that pop up immediately. I worked with Grace Jones who is
very eccentric and a lot of fun and she has a big heart. I just enjoyed
working with her. I did body painting on her and I painted her face like
crazy. I did a bunch of photographs.