he Beautiful Faces of Makeup Artist Pat McGrath

MANY OF TODAY'S leading makeup trends come from a woman who wears very little of it herself. In fact, Pat McGrath, one of the fashion and beauty world's most sought-after artists, wears very little color at all, preferring all-black ensembles whether she's backstage at a runway show or holding court at a fashion event. Which isn't to say she isn't colorful. Within the multibillion-dollar cosmetics industry, McGrath, the global creative-design director for Procter & Gamble, PG -0.83% is something of a legend—creating new looks on the runway and then distilling them into innovative products that find their way into cosmetics aisles and beauty counters around the world.

Makeup artist Pat McGrath is WSJ. Magazine's Fashion Innovator of the Year.

Just how in demand is she? Supermodel Linda Evangelista puts it like this: McGrath is the only makeup artist who can cause a job to fall apart if she's unavailable. Most of the time a shoot is canceled because they can't get a date on the photographer. "Sometimes, it's the model," she says. "But I've seen things get canceled because they can't get Pat. That's how important she is."

Photographer Steven Meisel rarely, if ever, works without her, and top fashion houses—including Prada, Dolce & Gabbana, Christian Dior, CDI.FR +0.54% Louis Vuitton and Gucci—all count on her for runway shows and campaigns. Self-trained and charismatic, McGrath has become a muse to photographers, a mother figure to models and one of the fashion world's most inventive talents.

"We go on these incredible journeys," McGrath says of her creative process. "It's always something different. It might be Blade Runner or a Fellini movie or Bette Davis —I could lose it over Bette Davis's lashes. Whether it's the Byzantine cathedral for Dolce & Gabbana or the modern film noir look we did for Prada, with the wet hair and undone makeup, it's always an incredible journey."

McGrath's energy is renowned in the industry. Evangelista recalls visiting Meisel at Pier 59 Studios one day while he was shooting a fashion spread featuring an exotic dancer. McGrath was in the center of the action, throwing dollar bills at the dancer and egging her on. "She's directing, she's correcting, she's collaborating," says Evangelista. "She's part of the whole process. A lot of what she does is not in the makeup chair."


McGrath, who is in her forties, grew up in Northampton, a small town north of London, with her "fashion obsessed" mother, Jean McGrath, a Jamaican immigrant. Together, they would watch classic films (everything from Blonde Venus to Taxi Driver) and scour the local thrift shops. On Friday nights they trolled makeup counters for new products. For Pat—the youngest of three children—these mother-daughter trips were mandatory. "I was hothoused into the industry without even realizing it. Every Friday night, she would take me to the store. We would look for pigments that worked on black skin. There might be one color a month. She'd say, 'That's it! There's a blue that works on us, it's not ashy.' " McGrath's mother mixed her own colors and creams, which is how McGrath still works today. "And I'd be standing behind her weeping, because I didn't want to be there. Then it ended up being my career."

After completing her A-levels, she moved to London in the early 1980s, just as the city was experiencing an explosion of colorful club kids. "I was obsessed with the New Romantics, such as the Blitz Kids, Boy George, Spandau Ballet: My friends and I would stalk them down along the King's Road," she says. Once, when she was loitering outside the Radio 1 studios, a DJ from the station noticed her unusual makeup: She'd used a red lipstick on her eyes and cheeks to create a dewy, rosy glow. "She said, 'Why don't you do my makeup like that?' " McGrath recalls. "And I said, 'That's a real job?' "


McGrath never went to beauty school or trained professionally—the DJ suggested a makeup course, but it turned out to be too expensive. Instead, she learned by trial and error, often experimenting on her own face. (The trick of applying lipstick to eyes and cheeks, which she popularized in the '90s, was something she stumbled upon as a young girl, she says, "because stealing eye shadows from my mother's drawer was difficult, but I could snatch a couple of lipsticks and she wouldn't notice they were missing." This technique later became the basis for her liquid eyeliners.) Some of her earliest jobs were as an assistant to British editor Kim Bowen on underground fashion shoots around London for magazines like Blitz and i-D, where she later became beauty director. "I did whatever they told me to: sweep up, get coffee, hold a light. I was just so happy to be on those shoots and participating in the creative process."

It was model Amber Valletta who, in the early '90s, told Meisel about a new makeup artist she thought he'd love. Valletta said McGrath was talented and had a wicked sense of humor. Sure enough, when Meisel met McGrath in 1996, the two hit it off. His first impression? "She needed a new wig. And I knew I had found a soul mate." The duo went on to create a series of iconic images for American and Italian Vogue, introducing bold new colors to what was then a conservative cosmetics market in the late '90s and dreaming up radical new beauty regimens into the new millennium. Meisel says their experiences together on set could inspire a miniseries. "Every day is complete insanity," he says. "From strippers during breakfast, to wheelchairs during lunch, to screaming and fighting all day long, we are constantly tripping and falling over each other."