"My research is the sum of everything I have gathered throughout my life" Interview with make-up artist Vanessa Icareg

"I’m Vanessa Icareg, a make-up artist. To me, make-up is first and foremost a tool for transformation and storytelling. I’m interested in creating characters, atmospheres, and emotional states through the face and body, building images that are at once narrative, melancholic, and suspended, in dialogue with fashion, art, and visual storytelling." And that’s how our latest episode of Under the Beauty Radar begins, a series dedicated to beauty professionals who go beneath the surface.

Interview with make-up artist Vanessa Icareg

Describe your style in 3 words

Narrative, melancholic, unsettling.

How has it evolved over time? What kind of visual research are you pursuing?

I have never seen make-up as a tool for enhancing beauty. From the very beginning, I’ve been fascinated by its ability to define an identity, build a character, or suggest a visual universe. My research is the sum of everything I’ve collected throughout my life: images, memories, films, experiences, people, obsessions, and references that continue to settle and evolve over time. It’s like having a personal archive that I constantly draw from. My work comes from translating these codes into a visual language. I’m interested in transforming deeply intimate and familiar elements into images that can be shared and interpreted by others. In this sense, every project becomes a form of storytelling, a way of giving new shape to something that already exists in memory.

Can you tell us about your professional journey?

My path hasn’t exactly been linear. I started in theatre, transforming actors into characters. Then I worked doing make-up for children, who are probably the most honest and hardest audience to impress. Later, I worked in the adult film industry, an environment that taught me speed, pragmatism, and how to have a very direct relationship with the body. Fashion came only afterwards. Sometimes I think my current approach comes precisely from this unlikely mix: a bit of theatre, a bit of childhood fantasy, a bit of raw reality, and finally the construction of images. Perhaps that’s why my work constantly moves between storytelling, transformation, and identity.

You’ve developed a recognizable look that feels a little messy and dreamy, not always “beautiful” in the traditional sense of the word. What inspires you?

I’m fascinated by images that exist in the shadows, where beauty and the unusual coexist. I find inspiration in fashion photography, cinema, contemporary art, and visual subcultures that use the body as a means of expression. I’m drawn to images that retain a sense of ambiguity and melancholy, that don’t reveal themselves through a single interpretation. Rather than perfection, I look for images that suggest something without fully revealing it.

How do you approach working on set? How does the process of creating a look for someone else begin for you?

I always try to start with the narrative. Even before make-up, I want to understand what kind of visual universe we are building and what role the face will play within that image. I often gather references that don’t belong to the beauty world: photographs, films, archival images, materials, or visual fragments that are part of my personal imagination. From there, I begin constructing a language that can interact with styling, lighting, and photography.

Your work often has to interact with very specific aesthetics, such as Ann Demeulemeester’s. How do make-up and fashion come together or create contrast?

When I work with very strong aesthetic identities, I first try to understand their language. I’m not interested in make-up overpowering the other elements, but in helping amplify their narrative. Sometimes the dialogue happens through harmony; other times through a subtle contrast that introduces tension and makes the image more complex. I believe the most interesting images emerge from the balance between these two possibilities.

Are there any colleagues whose work you follow? Who would you recommend we follow?

I admire the work of many colleagues and professionals in the industry, but it would be difficult to name a few without risking leaving out others who are equally important. For that reason, I prefer to recommend some sources of inspiration that have influenced my visual imagination. I find The Romance of Food by Barbara Cartland incredibly stimulating: I’m fascinated by its almost kitsch aesthetic and the way images of food are paired with objects such as antique porcelain. It’s a very interesting visual dialogue, especially from a colour perspective, and it continues to be a major source of inspiration for my make-up work. I’m also fascinated by the face-painting work of Serge Dyakonov and Serge Lutens, a true visual genius capable of creating a richly layered and deeply personal aesthetic universe.

What is your favourite beauty product that you can’t live without?

The Chanel Sublimage concealer and the Armani Luminous Silk blush in the shade Bold Pink.

What is your relationship with beauty trends? Which ones do you like and which do you avoid?

I look at trends as cultural phenomena before I see them as aesthetic ones. They’re interesting because they reveal the desires, fears, and aspirations of a particular moment in history. However, I try not to chase them. I’m much more interested in building a personal visual language that can evolve over time without depending on current trends. I avoid anything that tends to homogenise images; I prefer what leaves room for identity, imperfection, and experimentation. Ultimately, what interests me is creating images that remain open to interpretation, capable of existing in that ambiguous space between attraction, memory, and imagination.