Celebrities
He worked with hundreds of A-list celebrities like Cher, Janet Jackson, Tina Turner, Gwyneth Paltrow, Lisa Marie Presley, Courtney Love and Vanessa L. Williams. He became a highly in-demand makeup artist, often acquiring $10,000 per session for photo shoots or award shows.
He began publishing his work in books: The Art of Makeup, Making Faces, and Face Forward, two of which became TIME magazine best sellers; Making Faces debuted at number one. The books featured celebrities, as well as everyday men and women, including his mother, in makeup and costume (and sometimes prosthetics) designed to make them look like other celebrities or historical figures. He transformed Tori Amos into Mary, Queen of Scots, Celine Dion into Maria Callas, Lisa Marie Presley into Marilyn Monroe, Christina Ricci into Édith Piaf, Hilary Swank into Raquel Welch, Winona Ryder into Elizabeth Taylor, Tionne "T-Boz" Watkins into Josephine Baker and Martha Stewart into Veronica Lake, among others.
Aucoin made appearances on Good Morning America and Oprah.
He appeared as himself in an episode of Sex and the City called "The Real Me" (Season 4, Episode 2), doing Carrie Bradshaw's makeup for a fashion show during New York's Fashion Week.
The Tori Amos song "Taxi Ride" from her 2002 album Scarlet's Walk is a partial homage to Aucoin.
Read more about this topic: Kevyn Aucoin
Famous quotes containing the word celebrities:
“Passengers in 1937 totaled 270,000; so many of these were celebrities that two Newark newspapers ran special airport columns.”
—For the State of New Jersey, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“A society that presumes a norm of violence and celebrates aggression, whether in the subway, on the football field, or in the conduct of its business, cannot help making celebrities of the people who would destroy it.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)