A light in the dark

I admit right now, that this post has very little to do with makeup other than what inspires me to work with it.

I work in retail cosmetics, which as you might guess means that because of the winter holiday season, my soul is currently being sucked out through my eye sockets. This an excellent reason to feel inspiration flagging, with the economy in such poor shape; plummeting house prices, and skyrocketing gas prices. I like to think that what makes me different from a lot of the other drones who work in cosmetics these days is just this: I try to find ways to keep myself inspired.

This became clear to me when I was speaking with a makeup artist acquaintance of mine who happens to work for my favorite brand of all, NARS. Talking to her always makes me happy because she takes so much joy in what she does. I admit to being geeky and trying to find some of the movies that I know Francois Nars named some of his eye shadows after. This is because I wanted an idea of what inspired him to create those colors. Of course watching '70s French films like Night Porter and Emannuelle led me to find other interesting movies of a similar feel. I also discovered a Japanese film called In the Realms of the Senses, which reminded me that I needed to watch Memoirs of a Geisha again, which in turn led to that extremely long post on traditional Japanese makeup.

After a mention on the Imagist, I added many films directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini to my Netflix queue like Teorema, The Decameron, and Momma Roma. This led Netflix to suggest many of the films by Federico Fellini, many of which I have been meaning to watch for ages anyway, films like La Strada, La Dolce Vita and Nights of Cabiria. I've also made a pact with myself to watch as many Akira Kurosawa's films as I can as well, partially because I love most all things Japanese (Except Ichi the Killer; but that has nothing to do with Kurosawa) Knowing that I have all these amazing films waiting for me makes me incredibly grateful that Netflix was invented. NONE of these are available at my local Blockbuster.

I read the fashion and photography blogs too. I am not content to be what I am now, and as such I need to learn as much as I can about what I want to do. I have very little interest in doing movies or television shows, and three operas was enough for me. This may be egotistical of me, but it is rare that I look at a fashion spread and am boggled by the makeup. Not because it isn't good, but because I know that I could accomplish the look. What is more important then tehcnical is the one final quality: the inspiration to create the look involved. And so I flip though YouTube because often times people scan editorials and set them to music to watch like a small movie. After happening upon a Miesel work involving very shiny helmets, somehow this reminded me that Daft Punk had put out a new live album which I had to have.

While on that subject, did you know that Daft Punk's signature leather uniforms were custom designed for them by Hedi Slimane while he was working for Dior Homme? The duo also did the music for the SS08 Marc Jacobs/Louis Vuitton show, which should it interest you, can be seen here:



And for those of you who haven't seen Electroma yet... I enjoyed it but it was certainly hard to watch. It's as opposite from Interstella 5555 as can be.

At this point I'm just rambling. So I pound down endless energy drinks to go to work, and it is as my favorite comic book hero Spider Jerusalem said: "I do it to keep me here. To keep me interested." My point is this: Being an artist is just as much about what you take in as what you produce. I am an artist because I made a decision to be one, to educate myself on what I need to know, and to fill my mind with as much inspiration material as possible. That is what differentiates me from the other retail cosmetic drones.