Editor's pick

THE BRILLIANCE AND DEPTH OF MAKEUP ARTIST ESTELLE DESCARD

Estelle Descard has been a hard working makeup artist for years. She’s trained at Make Up For Ever Academy Paris and BTS in Aix en Provence (a beauty formation in the south of France to become beautician) and has worked for Lancome, L’Oréal, and Yves Saint Laurent. She participated in the Paris promotion of Shakira’s new perfume in Sephora Champs Elysées, and she worked the very popular French TV shows The Voice and La Nouvelle Star.

She’s also done makeup for countless photo shoots, short films and she was the makeup artist on director Gilles Bourdos’ film Renoir. She has done all of this and she is not even 25 years old! She’s also traveled quite extensively. She has lived in New Caledonia, which is a French island near New Zealand. She also lived and worked in Sydney, Australia and in Los Angeles, California.

When she was in L.A. she got the chance to work with some of the celebrity makeup artists on the sets of motion pictures. That’s actually the part of her story that I like the best – it shows off Estelle’s strong character and her immense determination. While she was languishing in Paris (does anyone ever really languish in Paris?) she decided that one of her dreams was to live and work in Los Angeles, the movie capital of the World. So she did her homework and found out who some of the biggies in the makeup business were in L.A., and wrote to them, asking if she could visit and perhaps assist them to learn from them. She really didn’t expect any response (would you?) but lo and behold! She got some warm replies and an invitation to come to Hollywood and see the center of the world’s film industry for herself. (Don’t tell her about Mumbai, India – they make hundreds of movies each year there – Bollywood).

When Estelle got to Los Angeles she was welcomed royally and given behind the scenes tours at the studios and then she actually got to assist some big name makeup artists with hands on participation.

Well, that sounds like fun to me and I really respect Estelle’s persistence and courage for writing to those Hollywood professionals. Of course, she is a professional herself so maybe I’m making too big of a deal out of all of this. Only one way to find out: I’m going to write to some big name Hollywood writers and see if they’ll let me work with them for a while. I’ll keep you posted if I get any responses.