Microprocessing
Stylists Are Improvising New Techniques on Zoom and FaceTime
Casting during this time may be affected by how YouTube- and Instagram-literate models are
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In Microprocessing, columnist Angela Lashbrook aims to improve your relationship with technology every week. Microprocessing goes deep on the little things that define your online life today to give you a better tomorrow.
While much of the world has ground to a halt under stay-at-home orders, for many people in the fashion and entertainment businesses, the show must go on. Actors and other celebrities must promote their movies, television shows, and image, while fashion and makeup brands are still rolling out new products. For on-screen talent and the people who help make them beautiful, including makeup artists and hairstylists, this is no easy feat: How does one achieve a professional haircut and high-concept makeup look when no one is allowed to get within six feet of each other?
Many hairstylists and makeup artists have landed on one solution: Zoom or FaceTime hair and makeup tutorials. Coaching a model or celebrity can be difficult, particularly when makeup artists and hairstylists typically work with an arsenal of professional products that the model is unlikely to have. The pivot has also revealed a divide between models who have mastered their own makeup through YouTube tutorials and those who haven’t.
“I definitely think it’s going to affect casting,” says Ashleigh Ciucci, a New York–based makeup artist. “There are some younger people that obviously are obsessed with YouTube makeup or Instagram makeup or whatever that like might have more skill but… I don’t think it’s going to be a lot of newcomers that are able to pull something off.”
Caitlin Wooters, a New York–based makeup artist who has done several virtual shoots in recent weeks, says the first thing she does when collaborating with a model on a virtual shoot is ask for a tour of the model’s makeup collection. “I have them send me overhead pictures of all the makeup that they own laid out,” Wooters says. That’s how she’s able to determine the looks they’ll be able to accomplish. This first task is a virtual shoot’s most challenging: If a model doesn’t have…
