Remembering Kevyn Aucoin

Aucoin had a keen interest in make-up from a young age and would often make up his sisters and take photographs with a Polaroid camera afterwards, he is considered to be the first and one of the best celebrity make-up artists of all time who was loved for not just his skill, but his personality. Aucoin had a troubled upbringing, brought up in an Catholic adopted family. He suffered bullying at school for his sexuality as he realised he was gay early on in his childhood and severe discrimination and abuse afterwards leading to him dropping out of school. After dropping out of school he enrolled in beauty school to pursue his dream of becoming a make-up artist and ended up teaching the class himself! He began a job in an exclusive womens store at the age of 18 in Lafayette but found that women were unhappy to have their make-up done by a man, so he moved to Louisiana to try and start up his career there where he suffered some traumatising and horrifying violent attacks which led to him and his boyfriend of the time moving to New York in 1983 to start up fresh. 

He began applying make-up on test models free of charge to practise and build up his portfolio where he finally had a turn of well deserved luck and was discovered by Vogue and worked alongside photographer Steven Meisel. He went on to do over 18 photoshoots for Vogue and in 3 years in the late 80's he had completed 9 Vogue covers in a row and also 7 covers for Cosmopolitan! During the highest point of his career he would be booked up for months at a time and could charge up to $6000 per session, he was one of the best paid make-up artists in history, incredible?! He wrote three bestselling books, which I have put on my Christmas wishlist: The Art of Make-up, Face Forward and Making Faces. The books featured celebrities, regular people and even his mum in costumes, special effects and beauty make-up, made up to look like historical figures and other celebrities. He made up Lisa Marie Presley into Marilyn Monroe, Winona Ryder into Elizabeth Taylor and Martha Stewart into Veronica Lake.

Lisa Marie Presley as Marilyn Monroe

 He became Creative Director for Revlons Ultima II line at the young age of 21 and also launched a line with Revlon which catered for all skin tones called The New Naked before he created a line under his own name (Kevyn Aucoin Beauty) in 2001. The New Nakeds was a very influential line as before there were separate lines for light and dark skin, soon after brands such as Bobbi Brown, Laura Mercier and MAC created similar versions of this collection. Today he remains the only make-up artist to ever have received a CFDA Award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America which was awarded to him in 1994.
The celebrities he worked with include Courtney Love, Kate Moss, Cher, Naomi Campbell, Gwyneth Paltrow, Lisa Marie Presley, Janet Jackson and many more.

Some of Aucoin's beauty sketches

Kevyn suffered a rare condition called acromegaly, a tumour on his pituitary gland which he had had much of his life undiagnosed, which caused him to grow two inches, two shoe sizes and two ring sizes in the last five years of his life. He became addicted to a large variety of prescription medication he took to help with the pain caused by his disease. Towards the near end of his life he frequently passed out, including at shoots which sparked great concern from his friends, clients, partners and family. He eventually passed away in 2002 aged 40, his death shocked the fashion world.

References:
http://nymag.com/nymetro/urban/gay/features/6236/
http://www.anothermag.com/current/view/4039/Remembering_Kevyn_Aucoin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevyn_Aucoin#Death

Images sourced from Google images.