Interviews
The Accidental Makeup Prodigy – Pat McGrath
Jemima Hunter
May 19, 2021
Pat McGrath started a career in make-up over twenty-five years ago, encouraging people worldwide to enhance their natural beauty and not be afraid to take artistically challenged risks. Being named the most influential make-up artist in the world by Vogue magazine and fashioning makeup looks for almost a hundred runway shows a year, McGrath is progressing every year in the industry and has become one of the most sought-after artists.
The Northampton born creator had an initial plan to follow a career in opera, a world away from Parisian catwalks and London Fashion Weeks. ‘I remember coming down to London to have proper vocal training and everything, and I had the ability, but my coach told me that I was very young and should enjoy life a bit more first.’
McGrath’s mother loved to sport a full face of makeup everyday but always had trouble finding a colour match. It was important for her mother to pick swatches of clothing out that enhanced her makeup ‘she showed me how to pick out colours in fabrics and then reflect that in your make-up.’
The fifty-one-year-old started with minimal knowledge in the fashion industry but completed an Art Foundation course which helped to express her love for creativity. McGrath’s first job started in 1990, as a receptionist and helping in the i-D magazine, alongside Edward Enninful.
Almost a decade later, the makeup master was offered a job working with Giorgio Armani to help with the collaboration of cosmetics, which paid off when she won the Pantene Pro-V Make-Up Artist Of The Year Award twice in two years. From then on, McGrath was nominated as a Member of the Order of the British Empire, hired by Procter & Gamble as a Creative Design Director and launched her own line of cosmetics in 2015 which had a turnover of a billion pounds and was stocked in Selfridges. ‘I released the Gold 001 Pigment, which was this product I always wanted to make, almost like a gift to the fans, and it absolutely flew.’
British Vogue hired McGrath as a Beauty Editor in 2017, working with old friend and previous colleague Enninful. Inspired by textured materials like feathers, leather and gold leaf, the makeup artist exclaimed ‘I really love being a makeup artist. It never gets mundane or predictable and every shoot and show is different.’
McGrath’s aim is to keep motivating inspiring cosmetics artists, stay unpredictable with her legendary looks and break boundaries through individuality in the fashion industry. ‘Often in my work, the approach to beauty is to seek perfection, yet sometimes beauty is imperfect or quite raw.’
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