How To Do David Bowie Circle Makeup

Photo: Getty Images

London, 1973

"He has the perfect face for makeup," makeup artist Pierre LaRoche once said of David Bowie, who would have been 73 today. That lightning-bolt-slashed visage on his Aladdin Sane anthology cover; that golden-sphere-stamped forehead punctuating his celestial Ziggy Stardust persona; that graphic electric-blueish gaze playing off his flame cherry mullet in the "Life on Mars?" music video. If the Brixton-born rocker's love affair with makeup wasn't a genetic predisposition, it was, at a minimum, written in the stars.

Equally conscious about what he applied to his face as he was about the rapturously poetic lyrics he recited and the seductively strange costumes he slipped into, Bowie'due south makeup collection was a menagerie of globally procured treasures. Co-ordinate to a 1973 Music Scene article entitled "David Bowie's Makeup Dos and Don'ts," he was a loyal patron of a footling shop in Rome, Italy, that had multiuse, neon-brilliant colored powders, similar Brand Up For Ever'due south Pure Pigments, in spades. In tandem with vivid shadows, he coated his lashes in black, sometimes blue, block mascara and smudged intense Indian kajal, or kohl, sticks near the roots. To requite his heart designs a larger canvas, he'd cancel out his brows by shaving them off. Thus, taking his steely, dual-color stare to an otherworldly new level.

"I e'er had a repulsive sort of need to exist something more than than human being," Bowie explained. "I felt very puny equally a man. I thought, 'Fuck that. I want to be a superman.' " Reinforcing this conviction was Bowie'southward perpetually pale, soft-focus, and intentionally alien complexion. Inspired by traditional Kabuki makeup, he dusted Japanese rice pulverization—picked up from a Tokyo five-and-dime store—to create a pure white base, and then draped the contours of his face in ruby-blood-red blush. Whenever he traced that iconic golden circle above brows, he used a rich gold pigment sourced from Germany. And probable because collaborator LaRoche was a pb makeup artist for Elizabeth Arden, Bowie developed a fondness for the brand's iconic Eight Hour Cream, which he'd slick over his lids and oral fissure to strobed event.

Bowie may accept pared back his beauty looks in his afterwards years, but from his revolutionary vision to his innovative techniques, the style he used color to liberate himself and brazenly blur gender lines left a larger-than-life touch on the earth that can still exist felt today. That bid for immortality past way of music and makeup? No space oddity, but a legendary life's mission accomplished.

Source: https://www.vogue.com/article/david-bowie-ziggy-stardust-birthday-beauty-makeup

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