Beauty Archivist: Kevyn Aucoin's Contouring
I’ve noticed a lot of mentions of Kevyn Aucoin on Instagram recently. Online beauty people in their teens and early 20s are identifying the influence of a makeup artist working 30 years ago in the faces of people like Alexa Demie. You could think that Aucoin’s legacy is enjoying a revival but actually his style of makeup has never really gone away.The techniques and aesthetics he developed are now just fully part of the beauty canon, used every time you want to look a specific type of hot. If you want to learn more about Aucoin (and you should, he was a really fascinating and talented person and the first makeup artist to really become a celebrity), then I would recommend watching the documentary “Larger than Life” but, in this column I’m going to focus specifically on his contouring techniques, and how they might have interacted with the technical capabilities of film.
Kevyn’s Naomi looks just like a heightened version of herself. If you weren't that used to looking at makeup you could think she is not wearing very much at all. You might be surprised to learn that this look and technique of application has had probably more influence on what we currently think of as beautiful than any other look. The Kardashians are the obvious torch bearers for contouring techniques but any time you use a concealer that’s a shade or two lighter than your skin tone you owe something to Kevyn Aucoin. Although Aucoin did not invent contouring, his development of the technique is the blueprint for every makeup you see with a bright under eye and a palette of smokey browns and beiges that exaggerate the natural planes of the wearers face.
Kevyn would famously start by blanking out his model’s face with a mask of heavy foundation. This created a one dimensional blank canvas. After stripping them back he would then rebuild the features, making corrections and amplifications along the way. In this photo of Naomi there is a hazy circle of warm brightness in the center of her face that gives her forehead and cheeks a fullness - interesting how despite the fact the look is dramatic we are not seeing any severe cheekbone angles or lines like we often do in modern contour looks.
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The inner corner of her eye and her orbital bone are the brightest point, several shades lighter than the rest of her complexion. The effect this gives is subtractive. It removes the hollow contour below the eye and creates a smooth plane instead. Naomi's nose contour extends into her eyebrow, describing her bone structure and clearly delineating her features. The cool blended coffee lip liner does the same for her mouth, the darkness at the corners emphasising fullness.
“As a makeup artist myself, I know that includes an understanding of how things play on camera as well as real life, making adjustments that can look crazy irl but make something perfect in the conditions it’s being photographed in.”
The overall effect is that Naomi’s face has been brought into dramatic relief, with creamy highpoints and heavy shadows. Although undeniably beautiful, the extent of this fake natural vibe gives her a slight mannequin look that sits a little too close to uncanny valley for me. Although his work was impeccable I feel like it must have looked pretty heavy in real life, but that sort of doesn't matter because ultimately this was a photographic technique that made sure that Naomi's real life beauty was accurately translated to camera
Naomi, one of the only black women with the status of supermodel at the time, has talked about how she would only ever go to Kevyn’s chair even if there was a huge queue backstage. Aside from their friendship, I think it's really interesting to think about why Aucoin’s artistry was so important to Naomi - and to draw a line between his contour techniques, specifically how he applied them to deeper skin tones, and the inherent racial bias in photographic equipment.
What we think of as technological capabilities are still often rooted in subjective decisions, and the history of film and its ability to capture colour in a way that is true to life is a great example of this. In the 1940s the first colour film was being developed for home use and the Shirley card was invented. A Shirley card was simply a portrait that lab technicians would use as a reference whilst calibrating colour, originally named after a Kodak employee. If the colours in the image matched the Shirley card then they were correct. And spoiler alert, Shirley was white.
It took until the mid 90s for Shirley cards to include images of Black and Asian women but even then they still weren't widely adopted. During this time lighting techniques had evolved to treat fair skin as the norm. An issue that is still highly relevant today even with digital photography. Something you probably know if you have ever tried to take a group selfie with multiple skin tones and seen that your iphone has automatically focussed on the fairer faces and failed to pick up other features clearly.
Knowing this and thinking of how often Naomi was the only Black woman being photographed alongside her supermodel peers, I imagine that Kevyn’s contouring techniques went some way towards helping her avoid being lost on camera. I haven’t found anything from Kevyn talking about this issue and so this connection is my conjecture. However, I know Kevyn Aucoin was such a great artist because he understood instinctively how to make people look their most beautiful, rather than trying to make them fit a standardised view of beauty, and that he was the favourite makeup artist of a diverse group of models and celebrities for a reason. As a makeup artist myself, I know that includes an understanding of how things play on camera as well as real life, making adjustments that can look crazy irl but make something perfect in the conditions it’s being photographed in. I think we can apply this knowledge when appreciating how technically brilliant Aucoin’s contour techniques, even if they now feel pretty culturally ubiquitous, really are.
Words: Grace Ellington
