Kate Moss, spiral perms and desert island products: 30 mins with makeup artist Val Garland
Val Garland
There is an untold number of kitsch Instagram profiles and blandly-written airport books dedicated to the sublime cruciality of motivation. ‘Feel the fear and do it anyway,’ they scribe, adding further to the robust cottage industry sculpted around the innate fear that the wrong choices can dramatically alter one’s life. The process of following such conversations can often lead one to feel disillusioned and cloyed, but one 30-minute Zoom call with legendary makeup artist Val Garland, and I found myself believing in the power of self-directed fear.
Ding! Dong! The global director of L’Oreal Paris has entered the chat. “Hello honey,” she purrs onto the screen, all feather bangs and cat-eye specs that would make Jean Seberg proud. She’s in Dublin as part of her ongoing role — it’s her fourth year in the job, she tells me — with the beauty megalith, but Irish humour, self-deprecation, and perseverance, she says, has always felt close to home. “Both of my parents are from Dublin,” Garland reveals. “My father grew up in Ballybough, and my mother just off O’Connell St. I still have relations in Tallaght!”
Garland herself grew up in the quiet English city of Bristol — as her soft and rolling accent still suggests — and lived there until she dropped out of school in the 80s, fleeing to Australia to become a hairdresser. Feel the fear, and do it anyway, she laughs. A salon was opened, resplendent with spiral perms and Concord-shaped cuts (“It was the 80s”), and an ill-fated shoot day led to her carving out her new passion.
“You must be aware that I was a hairdresser who wore a tonne of makeup,” she says, “and one day the makeup artist didn’t turn up, and the photographer said: ‘Well, you’re going to have to do it’, so I used whatever makeup I had used on myself that day — which was a luminous white foundation; black, black mascara; and a matte red lip.” The rest, as they say, is history.
Garland’s tenure as an MUA (makeup artist) has specialised in the outlandish, where one might suggest she isn’t so much a makeup artist, as an artist who works through the medium of makeup. Her most well-known creations are that of Lady Gaga’s prosthetic-heavy ‘Born This Way’ or the baroque ‘Good Kate, Bad Kate’ cover of W, shot by Steven Klein, which won a National Magazine Award. Today, she’s best known to a Gen Z audience as the eccentric host of British reality television competition Glow Up (Maura Higgins hosts the Irish iteration).
Garland’s iconic lines on the show are 10-a-penny, including the infamous ‘DING! DONG!’ she enters most judging rooms with, remixes of which are peppered throughout the web. The role is a dream, she says. As someone who gets bored easily, the new generation of MUAs coming up actually makes her “quite emotional”.
“The sheer raw talent — what these MUAs are doing with makeup is astonishing. Makeup has become more than just face paint,” she gushes, “it has become an accessory for the face, and you can take it as far as you want to. I remember back in the days when, if you had a nose ring, it was frowned upon, but now it’s like: ‘push every boundary, gimme it all’,” she winks through the screen.
It is this boundary-pushing that has defined Garland’s career. Adoring the Euphoria-adjacent direction makeup is taking in 2021, with the pivot to male beauty only reigniting her previous New Romantics flame, Garland believes there’s “just so much more makeup to go around” and the freedom of which, she believes, is intoxicating.
For young creatives coming up, her advice is simple: just keep going.
“Believe in yourself, say yes to everything, and just don’t give up. You’ve got to have a thick skin because not everyone is going to like what you do, but in order to be successful, you need to be different and have your own USP — so find that, and just keep pushing with it. Get as much knowledge as you possibly can and just — keep — practising.”
Her role with L’Oreal is a perfect fit. She lives the brand — she box-dyes her own hair with Casting Crème Gloss and swears by their mascaras — never getting bored as the innovation team constantly keeps her busy testing out product.
“It is kind of a family,” she says. “And you get to know all of the spokes, and we’re really all in it together. What I love about them is that L’Oreal really values my opinion — and that’s why I’m there, to bring in an eye on the ground.”
Her favourite products vary, she says, but her “desert-island products” always go back to the brand’s Paradise Mascara, their Infallible 24hr Foundation (“it’s just so easy, anyone can get that on”), their Colour Riche Lipstick and the Skinny Definer Brow Pencil (“it’s so hard to find a shade for pale girls, and this is it”.)
The conversation then goes onto liquid eyeliner, a product so infamous, the tools claiming to “make them easier to apply” are in their thousands. Nearly everyone with a makeup bag has tried and failed, yearning for a sleek Alexa Chung iteration, and landing somewhere between a late Amy Winehouse and modern Trixie Mattel. Garland herself is rarely seen without a feline flick, something which this writer must press on, lest the weight of her makeup-wearing brethren snap her shoulders.
“I use the L’Oreal Superliner Tattoo Signature,” she reveals. “I like it because the shape of the nib is quite fat and then gets really quite thin, and I can really get in there. Although I start with a black pencil, and scrub that into my lash line and then brush or cotton-bud it away — so that that line is gone and there’s a little grey shadow, so when you come back and do your liner, you have your sharp liner, but also that grey wisp, and that’s what makes it look sexy.”
She also, true to form, enjoys pushing the boundaries of what a black liner can do, and urges makeup users not to be afraid. “Wake up and smell the coffee, do not give up!” she cries.
And push boundaries she has, using her youth-based love of New Romantics such as Marc Bolan and Bowie to remind us of the beauty of eccentric maximalism that maintains her ‘feel the fear and do it anyway’ mantra. Garland has worked with everyone. Her relationship with Kate Moss is well-documented (“we always have a giggle, yet so professional”), and her favourite celebrities to work with range from Lady Gaga to Helen Mirren to Jodie Comer to Gemma Chan to Judi Dench (“what a honey”). But among her favourite people to rub up against are the naysayers, those who dismiss makeup as a frivolous activity and label it as unimportant and vain.
“To them I say — makeup makes a difference. Makeup can make you decide whether you leave the house today,” she says. “I remember my mother saying: ‘I’ve just got to put my face on’ like it was her armour. I think makeup is an incredible tool to empower and give confidence, make you feel beautiful. Whether you are he, she, they, them, or whoever, makeup transforms. And through Glow Up, I think we’ve been able to show that it’s not frivolous, it’s a powerful skill. And I think finally, we’re seeing that it’s a profession in its own right.”
She signs off coquettishly, thanking me for my time and questions. As I go, she blows kisses through the screen and compliments my makeup, only to dismiss my complimenting of her own. “Oh, I’ve got piddly little stumps for eyelashes, they’re nothing worth looking at.” A workhorse, who loves makeup and remains self-deprecating until the end –– maybe there is an Irish girl in there after all.
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