Makeup: Adam Wolfgang.
If you askPat McGrathto walk you through her makeup kit, be prepared to clear your week.
“You never knew what you needed.
Esenshel hat. Makeup: Adam Wolfgang. Makeup colors: Mothership V Bronze Seduction Palette in Xtreme Aubergine, Disobedient and Bronze Blaze, Skin Fetish Highlighter + Balm Duo in Golden and Bronze, Mattetrance Lipstick in Flesh 5, Permagel Ultra Lip Pencil in Brownouveaux, and Lust Gloss in Bronze Temptation and Bronze Venus by Pat McGrath Labs.
We were building 3D moving parts on people’s faces.
But now we’re traveling light.”
“We might be down to 60 bags?
Mother of Invention.Pat McGrath has transformed the beauty world with her ravishing makeup creations like this one on Meghan Roche. Makeup colors: Permagel Ultra Glide Eye Pencil in Shade and BLK Coffee, BlitzTrance Lipstick in Blitz Gold, and EYEdols Eye Shadow in Gold Standard (pressed on top) by Pat McGrath Labs.
One easy edit: the 20 suitcases labeled “book bag.”
Naval Aviation Photographic Unit in World War II, about Beaton and Lartigue, about Hitchcock and Bunuel.
But now, well, there’s the internet.
A Mother’s Touch.McGrath’s toolbox here: three of her favorite PML palettes (Mothership VIII Divine Rose II Palette, Mothership V Bronze Seduction Shade Blitz Flame, and Mothership VI Midnight Sun Shade Blitz) and her fingers. Then she just started painting. Model: LaPorchsia Winfield.
I’m just pretty sure she doesn’t even see the box.
In the fashion and beauty worlds, Pat is mononymous.
And those three letters equal incredible, prolific, fantastic, mind-bending creativity.
The Mother Lode.McGrath’s gleaming supply of gold rivals Fort Knox. Surreal Eyewear NYC sunglasses. Makeup colors, Mothership VIII: Divine Rose II Palette, Permagel Ultra Glide Eye Pencil in Xtreme Black, and BlitzTrance Lipstick in Blitz Gold by Pat McGrath Labs.
She has coaxed lashes from feathers and manipulated gold-dipped threads into eyeliner.
When I ask Pat if she’s ever going to run out of ideas, she pauses.
She cocks her head for a second; she doesn’t seem to understand the question.
Mother’s Little Helpers.McGrath’s studio and storage space in downtown Manhattan are a makeup lover’s Shangri-La. Every palette, every bauble, every photo, every tool, every prop has a purpose to aid her imagination. Set Design: Mary Howard.
Then, “No.”
I persist, wondering out loud if she ever feels that creativity is finite.
“I don’t ever feel that way,” she says.
Okay, then, that’s that.
This is not to say that Pat doesn’t feel pressure.
The couture shows were in February and I would start feeling butterflies in my stomach in November.”
Then Pat arrived, and they had to share the spotlight.
“It wasn’t this idea of heightening what was naturally there.
It was about creating something wholly out of her imagination.”
“I always got the impression that she wasn’t aiming for quote-unquote ‘beautiful,'” says Givhan.
Jean was, in Pat’s words, “consumed” by fashion and beauty.
It was Jean who told her daughter: “Choose a job in the arts, dear.
That way no one can ever tell you you’re wrong.”
Butpiercingsand Mohawks were not Jean McGrath’s brand of beauty.
“We’d walk down the street and my mother would say, ‘Don’t look at them.
This iswrong,'” Pat recalls with a laugh.
“And then, of course, that makes you obsessed.
That’s all you want to look at.”
But in her mind, she was very conservative.")
Mother Knows Best.McGrath’s ability to drive makeup trends is legend.
Jinsoon nail polish in Audacity.
Then, as a teenager, Pat learned something that lit up her path.
She says to me, ‘I love your makeup.
Could you do my makeup, love?’
And I was like,Is that a job?"
It was a really beautiful magenta-purple amazing, flawless, glowing.
Very easy, very today.")
Remember the 2012 resurgence of colored mascara?
Ombre lips in 2013?
Then she just started painting.
Model: LaPorchsia Winfield.
Then, in 2015, Pat turned the beauty world gold.
Why did she finally pull the trigger?
She points to her DMs.
“Everybody was on my case about it for a thousand years,” she says.
“‘Where’s your brand?
Where’s your brand?’
Then [with Instagram], I couldn’t avoid them.
It was constant torment.
Every morning I’d wake up and it was… ‘Wheres your brand, Mother?'”
Gold 001 sold out in 366 seconds.
Now’s as good a time as any to talk about Pat’s other name: Mother.
“I’d look after them.
The Mother Lode.McGrath’s gleaming supply of gold rivals Fort Knox.
Surreal Eyewear NYC sunglasses.
It’s nothing personal.
She was part of our annual “influencers” package.
Pat soon-darlinged me all day and then finally there was a quiet moment.
I asked her a question, then another.
It was going well!
And then, “My car’s here, darling.
She literally ran away from me.
It is during a creative call about the shoot on Zoom so she can’t run.
“I love gossiping,” she says, but not, apparently, interviews.
“In my career, I have chosen to embrace freedom over fear.”
Pat has rarely leaned into conversations about race, though.
To [Pat’s] credit, sheisthe standard.”
And why should she have to talk about her race?
“I don’t think that she dodged the label or ran towards the label.
She has just worked, just existed,” says Givhan.
“As a Black woman, she brings that part of herself to the role.
They set out to be a great makeup artist, and then along the way, things happen.
And her daughter has carried that into her own experience of beauty and life.
“I think in my career I have chosen to embrace freedom over fear,” Pat says.
“I have felt free to make the creative decisions I wanted to make, to take risks.”
“It’s amazing to see all the support that we’ve given to one another.
I’ve been introduced to so many more amazing Black beauty brands in these last few months.
This has been an incredible time.”
Pat McGrath is a phenomenally skilled artist.
So… what kind of artist would she be?
She thinks, but not for long.
“An opera singer.”
“So it’s possible for you to sing?”
“She can sing,” chimes in her chief of staff.
(Yes, of course, Pat McGrath has a chief of staff.)
“Only sometimes,” Pat clarifies.
Opera singers must have flawless technique.
They must have a deep understanding of history.
They traffic in exaggeration, in passion, in emotion.
Pat McGrath does all these things, with makeup.
Mother’s Little Helpers.McGrath’s studio and storage space in downtown Manhattan are a makeup lover’s Shangri-La.
Set Design: Mary Howard.
But let’s be clear: Pat also runs a vast operation with military-like precision.
“She’s got a big personality.
It’s just joy working with her.”
(Jacobs) “She’s so quick, she takes hold of the room.”
(Guido) Jacobs’s Louis Vuitton fittings often devolved into karaoke and Pat always joined in.
One of their most memorable numbers: “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina.”
“I knew all the lyrics and Pat was forgetting some of them,” Jacobs recalls.
“She had the mic and I was stage-whispering to her.
We were in stitches by the end of it.
Like she’d been doing it for a thousand years.
Pat can sing, Pat can dance, Pat can emcee voguing balls.”
“Once I get past midnight, I can stay up till 7 a.m.,” Pat says.
She swears that she forces herself to close her eyes sometimes, but not everyone is sure.
“I’ve had meetings that started at midnight.”
“She stays up all night long on Zooms,” says Campbell.
“Pat is a worker bee, and I get it because Im a Gemini too.
She is driven.”
“Even on the last job we did, she was not satisfied until, until…
I don’t know if she’s ever satisfied,” says Guido.
“She always feels it could be more, better, different.
Her tenacity for work is immense and she’s her own worst critic.
She questions herself.”
Ignore deadlines.Look, these are Pat’s rules, I’m just the messenger.
(Allure’s visuals director is still breathing into a paper bag after coordinating this shoot.)
“Everything’s done at the last minute.
That’s how she works,” says Hahn.
Sweat every last detail.
“She is such an active force in every component of what she’s selling,” says Jacobs.
“There are people who have a name on a cosmetic line who probably have never experienced the formulas.
‘‘And she says, ‘Yes, Alison, it does.'”
Never forget.Pat’s mind is a camera roll.
“f she sees a picture, she will remember everything about that picture,” says Guido.
She has a great library in her head.”
I ask Pat if she dreams about makeup, or ever wakes up to her next idea.
I see makeup and color and just incredible imagery all the time,” she says.
“Mostly when I’m awake.
To me, imagery is as important as the air we breathe.”
The new jacket?’
She said, ‘What jacket?
‘“And then she made it for you?”
“No, she made me a lovely dress to go to church in.”
Embrace the new.Social media stormed the beauty world over the past 10 years.
Suddenly “influence” wasn’t limited to a rarefied world of runways.
Not in the least.
“She kept going on about it at work, and she set me up.
But I said, ‘Don’t say anything, I’m just going to look.’
She swore on everything, and then goes, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, Pat McGrath on Twitter.'”
But it was Instagram, born four years later, that was the real revelation for her.
“Everybody said to me, ‘They don’t want to know about all of your work.
They want to know about what coffee you drink, what your cat looks like.’
I was like, ‘Well, I’m not going to be doing that, am I?’
Everybody still kept saying, ‘No, no, you must be personal.
They want to know what your coffee looks like.’
I’d be like, ‘Nah, girl, I’m going to put Grace Jones up.'”
So far, a few million followers are just fine with that.
Last year she collaborated on acrimson lipstick with Supremeand it sold out in eight seconds.
The $38 tube is now selling on eBay for close to $200.
Find your people.Pat’s gang, her chosen family, still includes Enninful, Palau, and Souleiman.
In the early ’90s, she met photographer Steven Meisel, with whom she’s worked intimately ever since.
She never apprenticed under another makeup artist, but considers these colleagues and her mother among her mentors.
“I’ve learned so much from everyone I’ve worked with every day,” she says.
On my visit to the office/makeup bag hangar, I meet Mimi.
“Mims” has been the master of Pats bags with two people working under her for 17 years.
Acrylic cases have compartments for a dozen differentglitters, each labeled by Mims’s trusty Brother P-Touch.
ThoseHome Editmakeovers are child’s play compared to what Mims has masterminded.
“How lucky I am, that my work is something that I’m obsessed with.
And that I love.”
And how lucky the world of beauty is to have Pat McGrath.
Sittings editor: Rajni Jacques.
Makeup: Pat McGrath.
Hair: Jimmy Paul.
Manicure: Jin Soon Choi.
