Section:GDN 12 PaGe:8 Edition Date:190827 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 26/8/2019 16:36 cYanmaGentaYellowbla

• The Guardian
  8 Tuesday 27 August 2019

‘It’s

art, but

on your

face’

master. Her inspirations are diverse

and obscure. “I’d really like to do an

Error 404-inspired look,” she muses.

“You know when something glitches

online? It’s mainly black and white,

but also green and red.” I browse the

list – what does the “eyebrow slits ...

but everywhere” entry mean? “I’ve

already done that one!” she says.

“I’d just given myself an eyebrow

slit, and I woke up in the middle of

the night and thought, why not do

it everywhere on my face? So I got a

tiny brush and concealer, and drew

lines through my makeup.”

Provenzano shows me a photo.

Her eyes are orange. Her cheeks are

a garish pink. There are thin lines

down her face, as if her make up

has been stencilled around them.

It is enormously impressive. After

she fi nished the look, Provenzano

uploaded a picture to Instagram,

then washed the makeup off.

“Sometimes I keep it on if I really like

it,” she shrugs. “Then a few hours

later, I’ll take it off .”

Once, young people used makeup

as visual code to gain admittance

into diff erent subcultures: black

lipstick for goths, winged eyeliner for

punks. Now, makeup is a subculture

all of its own. In communities

centred around Instagram and

YouTube, young people gather

virtually to look for inspiration,

swap product tips and master tricky

techniques. They often come to

makeup through superstar vloggers

such as NikkieTutorials (12.2m

subscribers) and Jeff ree Star (15.6m

subscribers). James Charles boasts

15.9m subscribers, despite a series of

scandals, one of which involved his

former mentor releasing a 45-minute

video claiming he had pressured

heterosexual men to go out with him

(claims he denied in another video),

temporarily losing him millions of

followers.

Beauty is big business. The market

research fi rm Mintel valued the UK

beauty and personal care market at

£10.2b n in 2018. Spending is up: 30%

of women aged 16-24 say they shell

out more than they did 12 months

ago. Brands that work with popular

infl uencers to corner the teen

market will experience phenomenal

growth – earlier this year, thousands

of teenagers mobbed a n appearance

by Charles at the Birmingham store

of the cosmetics brand Morphe.

(The city was gridlocked for hours.)

Popular makeup conventions

such as Beautycon or I mats (the

International Makeup Artist Trade

Show) draw thousands, while young

people compete on shows such as

the BBC’s Glow Up to be recognised

as Britain’s freshest makeup talent.

In this community, your face is a

canvas for incongruous, dreamlike,

wearable art. All you need is some

pocket money and a smartphone.

But what is fascinating about this

new subculture is that it is not

Many young people

now spend hours

in their bedrooms,

perfecting intricate

looks to post online.

What’s behind

the rise of extreme

makeup, asks

Sirin Kale

If I hadn’t

seen people

doing it online,

I’d never have

got into it

taking place in crowded moshpits

or twilit parks , but quietly in

bedrooms. “I don’t go out much, ”

says Provenzano. “My friends come

here or we go to their houses ... but

we don’t really go places.”

Aiman Sheeraz, a 17-year-old from

Manchester, says: “My favourite skill

is blending. This is what YouTube

has taught me – to blend my life

away .” Sheeraz got into beauty

because of her mum, who loved

makeup. “We’d watch Asian bridal

makeup tutorials and try to recreate

them together. Looking back at the

pictures, they were so horrifi c!”

After her mum died two and

a half years ago, Sheeraz started

Milly

Provenzano

‘I t’s literally

art!” exclaims 16-year-old Milly

Provenzano, sitting cross-legged

on her single bed. Her eyeshadow

is like the plumage of a tropical

bird: blue, pink and yellow, to

match the rainbow lettering on

her Pride T-shirt. On the wall

above her, Provenzano has taped

up photographs of her favourite

Instagram makeup stars: drag artist

Hungry , famed for transforming

Björk into a vagina-fl ower hybrid for

the cover of her Utopia album, and

Antoinette Mahr, whose trademark

multi coloured style was clearly the

inspiration for Provenzano’s look

today. I have asked the teenager

from Kettering, Northamptonshire,

to justify the many hours she spends

alone in her room, perfecting

fabulously complicated makeup

looks. “That’s like saying to someone

who does A-level art and is painting

all the time, ‘Oh you shouldn’t be

doing that, you should be doing

something more academic.’ It’s just

art, but it’s on your face.”

Pulling out her phone,

Provenzano shows me a list of

makeup looks she would like to

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