Alex Box.

beauty
11/9/2009

Thinking outside the Box.


by Hynam Kendall


In a time when everyone’s being told to scale back and react to the global economic collapse with a modest aesthetic and pared down lifestyle, Alex Box is forging her one-woman army for the return of glamour, of colour, of fun.


Hosted at Annroy, Rankin's new Kentish Town gallery space, theatrical make-up artist and all-round fashion scene stalwart Alex Box’s new book tentatively titled, well, Alex Box, receives the royal treatment with an exhibition of Box’s greatest dramatic masterpieces. Photos adorn the walls, moving from dark Berlin cabaret to kaleidoscopic clown. A sea of tropical celebrities admire her beauty shots in which everything from pigment to post-it’s have been used in place of rouge and mascara. It is the first ever extensive collection and exhibition of her work, and, as Alex agrees herself, it couldn’t have come at a more needed time.  

 Hynam Kendall: In any given context, your name is always shortly followed by the word “unconventional”…

Alex Box: I don’t see my make-up as unconventional, strange, it’s just how I see things. To believe there is only one form of beauty – ‘conventional’ beauty – is unconventional in itself. Beauty is totally subjective, and I really believe that what I do is beautiful.

HK: I think it’s probably because you’ve used literally everything, from pigment to post-its, to transform your models

AB: Yes, I’m always searching for new textures. I always see things that I could turn into a face sculpture as I have a very crafty eye and see potential in everything, everywhere I go. Going to B&Q is a sensory overload for me. If it inspires me, I find a way of using it.

HK: What’s the oddest thing you’ve used?

AB: I make a lot of masks, and one time used only coke cans that had been run over by cars, all scarred and battered and flat with treadmarks. I spent a long time wandering the streets of London with a bin liner collecting those tins. I made monocles with the can rims and a full face mask with crushed cigarette boxes as well. It looked like Saxon chainmail.

HK: Do you think your aesthetic is a product of your Chelsea art school background?

AB: Chelsea channelled a flame that was already in my heart from an early age. From as far back as I can remember I had made weird and wonderful things.

HK: But would you have a different aesthetic with a more traditional make-up background?

AB: Maybe… but everyone’s style is very different, personal, and I have a problem with being told what to do. I’m a bit of an anarchist and wouldn’t have lasted long being classed into proper makeup techniques. My aesthetic is more born out of my compulsive curiosity with life.

HK: It’s quite obvious you were into performance growing up. Your style is very theatrical. It’s almost like costume, rather than make-up?

AB: Yes! Exactly! I believe in make-up as a form of transformation. I like the idea of a costume, of suspending people’s belief, creating theatre and magic, holding people spellbound for a few moments while they figure out what they’re looking at… but essentially it is done with make-up, so it is make-up.

HK: I know you were really into painting at college, which, towards the end of your course, turned to body painting…

AB: It was a seamless transition, leading towards where I am now.

HK: Well, some of the models you work on now end up with such intricate patterns that it’s almost blurring the boundaries between make-up and illustration.

AB: Yes, it’s just the canvas that has changed. This is what I wanted to illustrate in my new book. It could be a textile painting, or a model, or even a garment. The inspiration is the same, it’s just how you chose to anchor it. Painting, illustration, sculpture, make-up… it’s all legs on the same animal.  

HK: And you use the same materials as artists, rather than materials designed for make-up; paint, pigment, pens, pencils...

AB: Absolutely, the art shop is my home.

HK: You’ve worked for some of the biggest names in fashion, doing runway with Peter Jensen, Biba, PPQ, editorial and advertising work with Karl Lagerfeld, Richard Burbridge, David Sims, but it is your collaboration with Gareth Pugh that you are most recognised for. You’ve worked with him since the very beginning, for all his shows…

AB: I feel a deep understanding and respect for what he is doing, and think he is one of the most naturally talented people I have ever met. We were introduced by Nicola Formichetti, who used to style his shows, and who I worked with at the time. I felt an immediate rush of love when I saw what he was trying to achieve through clothes, and I met him at a time when I thought fashion had really lost its way with creativity…but then along came Gareth! It energised my soul.

HK: Gareth, like you, has quite a gothic aesthetic …

AB: Yes, we definitely do share the same aesthetic, we are both purveyors of the dark arts. But we like to smile. Smiley Goths, we are – Smoths! And without using many words we manage to convey to each other what we want, we just feel the moods of each collection with the same heart. I see the clothes beforehand and react emotionally through make-up. He puts his trust and faith me completely.

HK: Like you, he’s also got an interest in sculpture and architecture (he was going to study sculpture at the Slade School of Fine Art), and has made a routine of conflating art and fashion.

AB: Certainly Gareth is not just a clothes designer as I am not just a make-up artist. Both of our work does incorporate performance, art and sculpture, you’re right, I do feel that we both share the same vision for creativity, and that creativity is boundless…

HK: I loved the bird wings and feathers on his catwalk in Paris. It seems to have tapped into this new trend of taxidermy in beauty and fashion, there’s so many artists at the minute doing dead animals as necklaces, handbags and clutches…  

AB: Our lives move so fast and everything is a micro-trend and then it’s over. In a time when everything is over and forgotten about instantly, taxidermy is a way of prolonging that physical thing forever, stopping time and it’s inevitable decay. Plus people like objects of death, it reminds them they are alive.

HK: You mentioned before your new book coming out. How did Rankin get involved?

AB: I worked with Rankin on a few editorials and he could see in my work someone who was breaking the mould. He loves a challenge, and, even though we have an incredibly different aesthetic, we have a similar spirit of adventure. It was almost as if he was anthropological in his approach to the images, they’re true subject portraits. I created whatever was in my head that day and he recorded it, capturing the spirit and energy the second the paint had chance to dry.

HK: What’s in it for us? What is it aiming to do? Is it for inspiration? I mean a lot of the looks will be unrealistic and unachievable for the average woman…

AB: All I want is to create thought, suspend belief, inspire debate and present fantasy and illusion. Art through make-up.

HK: But realistically, none of the readers are going to emulate your sci-fi Grecian goddess Jonny Blue Eyes runway look, or stencil great big swirls across their face… so, looking at it from a make-up point of view, how can readers translate your photographs?

AB: That’s quite funny you should feel that it should be ‘applicable’ or ‘practical’. It’s fantasy! Some things are just meant to baffle, to be experienced. If I inspire you along the way to paint yourself gold, then all the better!

HK: I know you feel that it’s quite a timely book – a reaction to the economic collapse, a time when people are being told to strip things back and be modest .

AB: Everybody needs an escape, especially now. I want to make you think you’re stepping into the looking glass. An alternative world of illusion and mystery. I’m creating the potion that’s in the bottle labelled ‘drink me’!


Alex Box is published by Turnaround (£50) and will be exhibited at Annroy Gallery, Kentish Town from 23rd October – 22nd December. 

Alex Box is artistic director of make-up brand Illamasqua. 

www.illamasqua.com

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