Holy Grails: MAKEUP
This is the most important list I may ever make.
TLDR; scroll all the way down to the bottom for a link to a list of 65+ of my most favorite makeup products and info on why they’re great. Or, you could not be rude, and read my little story first.
Frida Kahlo used Revlon brow pencil in shade “Ebony.” Interesting, no? I thought she was au naturel in that department. She also used a powder blush called “Clear Red” (a perfect name), and pink nail polish and a coral lipstick. Photos of the blush show its fuzzy round applicator completely stained in the pigment, but I wonder how she actually applied it. Surely she used her paint brushes to blend it into her signature saturated cloud bursts on her cheeks. She was known for her polished, but never overdone beauty looks—an apparent pioneer of no-makeup makeup.
Too, I wonder what other products and shades she used on her cheeks. You can see in her self portraits, and in the famous color carbo photos by Nickolas Muray (her hot photographer boyfriend), that she sometimes had an apricot, or a sheer Bordeaux flush.
I dressed as her once, and feel that this is the most intimate way to get to know another person. The ordeal lasted several months, starting when I joined two-hundred other tourists inside her home, now a museum, in Mexico City. It’s where she died, and also where she says she was born (annoyingly, historians are always pointing out that she might have made a few things up about herself). I love that about her. Imagine living your entire life at your parents’ house, with everyone taking care of you, expressing every single weird thought and impulse, and taking over most of the place so you can make your things and invent new ways to wear clothes and do your hair. She deserved this life more than anyone, for all the tragedy she endured.
In family photos—her dad was also a photographer—you can see that her relatives indulged her costumes from an early age. You can also see that Frida was likely not the only eccentric in the family. When she was bedridden, her mother installed a mirror above her bed so she could continue to paint self-portraits. All of this was on display in her home, now the museum, La Casa Azul. I understand her on a cellular level, in ways I can’t even get into right now.
Crucially, I know what it took for Frida to create saturated, yet natural cheeks, deceptively enhanced unibrow (though I, too, once have an impressive unibrow), and the braided sculptures she created with her long wavy hair.
Knowing her as I do, I am convinced she did not just use the handful of products photographed as part of a relatively recent exhibition of her personal belongings. Though, as the story goes, Diego Rivera, her on-again-off-again husband and noted asshole (love doesn’t cure narcissism), had her clothing and supplies and products locked in a bathroom when she died in 1954. This bathroom was only opened again in 2004, when all of these things were rediscovered and photographed and exhibited as defining objects of her life.
I share this list with you today in hopes of avoiding any miscommunication in a future exhibition of my life. I do indeed see the possibility of the exact same thing happening to me when I die—an old man locking all of my stuff up until my museum is complete, probably choosing all of the wrong things to keep, not even knowing if I liked them enough to recommend. So let this be my definitive, official list of cosmetics which have played an important part in my life. I revoke any rights to display. Bury me with them.
Link to list below the paywall, plus access to Holy Grails: SKIN, and Holy Grails: HAIR.
Love you.
💋 Annie