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BIO >>
Kevyn Aucoin, often referred to as the "make-up guru", was an American make-up artist and visionary with style who specialized in reinventions and transformations of the facial canvas. "With his makeup and brushes, Kevyn is an alchemist. He helps creatures of reinvention transform themselves. His favorites are the performers who inspire transformations in others, namely their fans, and for Kevyn, too." [The Art of Makeup]
Kevyn had been working with Tori Amos for several years professionally and was also very close personal friends. Kevyn worked on Tori for many television appearances, the Hey Jupiter video, and the album artwork for To Venus And Back, and more significantly, Strange Little Girls. In conjunction with photographer, Thomas Schenk, Kevyn was enlisted to aid Tori to create and visually channel the "lost souls" of the characters that make up the Strange Little Girls (images along left).
Aucoin published three books which document celebrity transformations and provide make-up techniques. Tori featured in all three: Face Forward (2001), Making Faces (1999), and The Art of Makeup (described further below).
A tragic loss was had when on Tuesday, May 7, 2002, Kevyn (Age 40) passed away from complications caused by a pituitary brain tumor. He will truly be missed. Visit the kevynaucoin.com for the "Remembering Kevyn" and "Kevyn's Column" sections.
"In Memoriam" 2/14/62 - 5/7/02
Kevyn Aucoin touched the faces and hearts of millions.
By his great talent, he forever changed the world of beauty.
Through the medium of makeup, Kevyn had the rare gift to reveal an individual's innermost beauty. Whether she be a supermodel or a midwestern mother of six.
To know Kevyn was to love him, and he was sincerely loved by all.
We grieve the loss of not only a great artist, but a great man.
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QUOTES >>
"For those like me who loved Kevyn the person, the heart now weeps as if made of water color. Earth has lost yet another light, but perhaps, he has joined the masters who paint our sunsets."
--Tori Amos
"Yes, he was a master painter, but it was what he did in the conversation that made your inside glow, and helped you find the part of you that had grace or humor," said the singer Tori Amos, whose daughter was Mr. Aucoin's godchild. One afternoon late in her pregnancy, she recalled, "he held my hand and said, 'I think you look so sensual right now.' I said: 'Come on, let's be real. I'm a beached whale.' And he said, 'No, I see sensuality in you, and I'm going to make you up.' So he made me up, and even though I could barely roll over, he took pictures of me. He captured a simple moment in our lives and turned it into something beautiful and meaningful. And he made me feel beautiful in the process. This was a man who loved women," Ms. Amos added, "even the ones who weren't good � the nice-seeming people who were closet Cruella De Vils. I would watch him working on a person and I'd think, 'Yikes, I wouldn't want to leave my Alsatian with her.' But by the time he had told her a few jokes and finished his Baby Jane imitation, the walls of rigidity and insecurity would be broken down."
--Tori Amos, New York Times, May 12, 2002
"Tori Amos has a special understanding, not only about emotional truth but also about her makeup. I'm not talking about being pretty for a video -- she understands how makeup can express a feeling, and she's the least vain person I've ever met. Makeup, to her, is part of the architecture of her work. Tori has gorgeous full lips, and she looks devastatingly beautiful with red lipstick. When I created the Japanese Inoui line for Shiseido, I made a color just for her (try the American substitute, Hybrid Red #127). She even wrote a line in her song "Muhammad My Friend" about it: "And on that fateful day/When she was crucified/She wore Shiseido Red."
--Kevyn, Allure Magazine, November 1999
"This reference to the Scots side of her ancestry is the first of two visual explorations into Tori Amos's diverse cultural past. As is the case for many of us, Tori's ancestry is a mix of races and religions, philosophies and professions, fortunes and foibles. What to some may seem like a family tree grown wild and untamed is actually a mighty oak that has weathered life's many storms and can still put out a rare and beautiful blossom like Tori."
--Kevyn Aucoin, Face Forward
"..There is an education to be found in any one line of Tori's music. Her lyrics read like lessons in life. But her gifts range far beyond vocal and songwriting skills. As one of the most compassionate people I have ever known, she has a magical, near mystic presence that deeply affects everyone she touches. Tori's mother's paternal and maternal ancestors are registered on the eastern Cherokee tribal rolls and fled into the Smoky Mountains to rebel against the Tail of Tears. With Tori, it's not hard to see the bloodlines. I've renamed Tori Ton'ingina (from the Omaha Tribe, Inshta'cunda clan), which translates into "new moon coming." Tori, in you the new moon comes and the warm sun rises."
--Kevyn Aucoin, Face Forward
"...About a year later, I was in Los Angeles mixing business with pleasure. Tori Amos five star Venus cd had just been released and I was in town working with her for some television appearances... she [Singer: Monica] asked me what I was doing in town and I told her I was working with Tori. When she told me how much she loved Tori's music and that I should say hello for her, it instantly sealed our friendship (If you want to become an instant friend of mine, knowing and loving Tori's music is sort of a prerequisite.)"
--Kevyn Aucoin, Face Forward
"The kids that come to Tori are the outcasts," says celebrity makeup artist Kevyn Aucoin, one of Amos' close friends. "She offers them solace and understands them on such a deep level." He pauses. "I know it sounds New Age-y, but Tori loves to give and to heal. She's about feelings, and she's willing to share her path with people who are open to that." - Spin - November 1999
"'Words are very unnecessary, they only do harm,' sings the prolific singer/songwriter Tori Amos, on her new CD, Strange Little Girls. I couldn't agree more as I try to describe her provocative choice to cover songs written only by men. With her versions of songs such as '97 Bonnie and Clyde by Eminem, and Happiness Is a Warm Gun by the Beatles, Tori dissects, reinterprets, and ultimately exposes the irony, humor, and in Eminem's case, the madness within. For the shoot, Tori wanted to create physical manifestations of each song in the form of real women and one real man. Fourteen characters, two days, and one nervous breakdown later, and here we go...."
--Kevyn Aucoin, Allure magazine, October 2001
"Kevyn [Aucoin] could make a potato look glamorous! He is a master sculptor and not just of the face. My heart is seven times bigger after he's given me an eyebrow."
--Tori Amos
"Tori Amos possesses a beauty of a very unconventional sort. Her curled, vivid-red hair, darkened and contrasting eyebrows framing such penetrating blue, blue eyes, and Chesire cat grin are highly unusual features. Tori definitely deviates from what is ordinarily considered to be beautiful. She reminds me of a cross between Andie MacDowell, Demi Moore, and Fievel the Mouse. But her looks are only part of what I find compelling about Tori. You need only listen to her music once or glance at her videos to realize that she stretches the boundaries. Her quirkiness (a quality I admire!) and what some might consider shocking lyrics are definitely meant to challenge pop culture's mainstream. "
--Kevyn Aucoin, The Art of Makeup
"In the last few years I've been more aware of the questioning way people see sexuality. A lot of that's because I've been educated by Kevyn Aucoin, who is one of my best friends. He's really opened my eyes to what he goes though, what he thinks, what he feels, his perception on issues. Because of him in my life, I see things differently even when I'm attracted to a man, say, who's questioning his sexuality. "
--Tori Amos, "NEW CITY" in Chicago, September, 1996
Tori Amos: "...I'll tell you about the guy Kevyn Aucoin did the make-up right, everybody's heard of him, he's the make-up artist who does the characters...he does everyone. But the thing is, to make the different characters, and ladies if your listening, he was tying parts of my face. They have...I'm not supposed to tell this but um, a lot of the celebrities in photographs, they get their faces tied. They're pieces of tape with strings that you put under the chin and around the cheekbone and around the forehead and you give people a mini lift.
JR: So you pull it back and tie it around the back.
TA: Around, and it goes under wigs, it goes under hair and a lot of people, um that you know, go do television, you don't even know...
JR: And they wear that when they're on TV?
TA: Well, if it's say it's a concert and it's for TV and they can hide it with wigs, they can really do a lot and it can change everything.
JR: What a terrible thing if you then forget to take it off when you go out for a coffee afterwards.
TA: You don't forget to take it off. It's one of the most painful...oh yeah. Yeah well, it's torture. I mean think about it, your face is getting tied in knots, but the thing is, that's how the women were created to be different ethnicity or from different places, different stories.
--Tori Amos & Jonathan Ross, UK radio show, December 8, 2001
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OTHER WORK >>
 CELEBRITIES
Brittany Spears
Nicole Kidman
Kate Moss
Gwyneth Paltrow
Winona Ryder
Madonna
Cindy Crawford
Audrey Hepburn
Barbra Streisand
Hillary Swank
Linda Evangelista
Andie MacDowell
Liz Hurley
Liza Minnelli
EDITORIAL
Vogue
Cosmopolitan
BOOKS
The Art of Makeup
by Kevyn Aucoin
Kevyn Aucoin partners with the industry's greatest talents to create an exquisite, star-studded collection of portraits, and reveals some timeless beauty tips that helped earn him his super-status in the fashion industry.
ISBN: 0062730428
Publisher: HarperCollins (paperback)
Reprint edition: May 1996
Making Faces
by Kevyn Aucoin
For more than a decade, Kevyn Aucoin has been the makeup artist of choice for fashion and entertainment royalty. But Kevyn believes that makeup gives everyone the power to transform themselves and try out new personas. In MAKING FACES, he starts with unbeatable tips on the basics of makeup application and technique. Then he shows you how to use these fundamentals in interesting and unconventional ways, with step-by-step directions for dozens of different looks. MAKING FACES also features instructional full-color sketches with each face, a gallery of noncelebrity transformations, and, of course, fabulous images of scores of stars and supermodels as you've never seen them before.
ISBN: 0316286850
Publisher: Little, Brown & Company
Pub. Date: August 1999
Face Forward
by Kevyn Aucoin
Once again Kevyn Aucoin astonishes with his incredible transformations of famous and ordinary people alike. In this new book, he demonstrates how anyone can have a variety of different faces. Working with a whole new cast of famous faces, he turns Celine Dion, Julianne Moore, Sharon Stone, Susan Sarandon and many others into their most beautiful, glamorous, and intriguing selves. For each and every face, he provides step-by-step instructions and illustrations that will make them easy to reproduce at home. With this gorgeous and practical book, anyone can face forward to the new millennium with confidence and style.
ISBN: 0316287059
Publisher: Little, Brown & Company
Pub. Date: October 2001
FILM
Oliver Button Is A Star - a PBS documentary that looks unflinchingly at the issue of bullying, teasing, and gender-role stereotyping. The film shows DePaola, well-known dancer/choreographer Bill T. Jones and makeup artist, Kevyn Aucoin, described as "a king in the fashion industry," in interviews, each recalling being taunted and called names and, in Aucoin's case, beaten up constantly, because he was different.
AWARDS
Music Video Production Association : Best Makeup
for Jennifer Lopez's "Waiting For Tonight"
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