Joey Mills liked to tell people he was a blonde.
Of course, he wasn’t.
He never seemed to stop working during that period, racking up more than 1,600 major magazine covers.
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Those bushy brows and piercing eyes you see inBrooke Shieldss Calvin Klein Jeans ads were a Joey Mills special.
He painted the faces of Beverly Johnson, Princess Caroline of Monaco, and Mariel Hemingway.
Mills did all this when magazines and advertising were still whiter than white.
Kim Alexis in makeup by Mills on the October 1982Glamourcover.
“My first model was my mother,” Joey Mills toldMake-Up Artistmagazine in 2011.
“She was very chic.”
According to Millss friends, Doshie was also very accepting of a son she recognized was gay early on.
Mills on aVoguebeauty shoot with model Sheila Johnson in 1980
She died during Mills’s teens, which friends say led to a period of housing instability.
“He was living in a bus station, having a hard-knock life,” says Thomas today.
“He became strong.
Sultry makeup on model Melanie Cain for a March 1976Vogueshoot.
Kim Alexis in makeup by Mills on the October 1982Glamourcover.
Mills lied about his age to get a job at a Philadelphia department storemakeup counterat age 15.
Later, he started moonlighting as a model so he could be around like-minded folks.
Eileen Ford, the inimitable agent and starmaker, eventually saw Millss work and began booking him.
Soon his artistry was on the cover ofCosmopolitanandMademoiselle.Mills was called in to do test shoots forVoguein 1979.
Cue the big time.
“And you know who always won?”
Mills toldMake-Up Artist.“Me!”
Friends describe Mills as a bit of a diva, but only because he knew that he could deliver.
“He was charismatic; he had a strong personality,” Thomas says.
“When he set his goals, he met his goals.
Behind the braggadocio was a real sweetness too.
“He was very caring about the girls.”
It was contagious in a good way.”
Ninety-eight percent of my magazine covers are for white publications.
I’ve done 150 covers for European magazines.
I claim more covers there than any other makeup artist.
You cannot let your Blackness be your limitation.
Do all makeup.”
Model Peggy Dillard-Toone was still in college at Pratt when she met Mills during aMademoiselleshoot.
“Some of my favorite pictures ever are the ones Joey did,” she says.
“I felt like I looked like myself.
[When] I was the only Black girl on set, Joey never made me feel different.
He treated us all the same.”
Sometimes Mills would look at layouts with editors.
“He’d say, I’m sorry, but Black women don’t wear white stockings with everything.
I don’t know what demo you’re looking at,'” Dillard-Toone recalls.
Sultry makeup on model Melanie Cain for a March 1976Vogueshoot.
Mills loved to talk.
“One night we were in Rome, working until 2 or 3 a.m.,” she says.
I said, ‘No, Joey let me have my cappuccino first!’
I found it really fun to be with him."
Friends recall Mills as social.
He liked to hit Studio 54, though Thomas says he wasn’t the best dancer.
He didnt have a long-term partner, which some chalk up to living through the AIDS crisis.
:All he did was work for 20 years straight," hairstylist Gary Evans says.
“He never had time for a lover.
He joked that he wanted to marry Nelson Mandela when he came home from jail.”
A new generation of makeup artists was coming up.
The disco glamour he loved was out, grunge was in.
But friends say that throughout his life, Mills kept any personal disappointments to himself.
At Thanksgiving, Noel would drop off a turkey for Mills and friends.
“I’d have to carry it,” Evans says.
“Joey would say, ‘I’m ablonde.
I cant carry that!
[I’d say], ‘We adore you, but really, pick this turkey up.'”
“He had a generosity of heart,” Thomas says.
And an indefatigable spirit.
Later that evening, he died at the age of 80.
