Elevate to a cult – Style – Kommersant

“Kommersant Style” talks about the stylistic devices of the new film “Blonde”.

While critics are arguing about the artistic merits of the new film “Blonde”, one cannot fail to appreciate the brilliant work of Ana de Armas and, of course, the work of the team in creating the image. Thanks to the costume designer, stylist and makeup artist, Ana de Armas’ version of Marilyn Monroe is currently one of the most compelling and charismatic.

From hot brunette to platinum blonde

Before each shooting day, the actress spent 3 hours in the dressing room chair. The hair took the longest. De Armas’s natural hair was tied daily in a tight bun, put on a stocking cap and additionally covered with silicone bands to completely hide the hairline. Only then were wigs put on, which had to be modified during the shooting day. The film’s make-up artist Tina Resler Kerwin says, “This allowed us to change wigs very often. A regular bald hat wouldn’t have been able to withstand being peeled off and put back on, which we did quite often.”

It is known that Norma Jean herself (the name and surname of Marilyn Monroe at birth) was dark-haired, but for her acting career she dyed her hair platinum blonde. She had to maintain the color every few days. Moreover, the actress had to straighten her hairline, getting rid of the so-called “widow’s visor”, using a painful electrolysis procedure.

Eye shape, mole and lipstick

Marilyn Monroe’s makeup is still considered one of the most exciting. Her personal make-up artist, Allan Snyder, owns many beauty hacks that are unusual and ahead of their time. For example, for the effect of glossy skin, he used Vaseline, and to create juicy alluring lips, the makeup artist mixed several shades of lipsticks. In his book Colors. A History of Makeup,” Lisa Eldridge is quoted as saying by Snyder, “I would outline her eyes clearly with a pencil, but lift the line—say, almost three sixteenths of an inch—just above the pupil, and from there I would take the tip up. From the same point to the outer edge of the eyelid, we glued eyelashes. And the lower eyelid was darkened with a pencil so that the eyes stood out on the face completely and distinctly. Sometimes the makeup artist would add a brown liner down her lower lid to make it look like a shadow cast by her thick lashes.

“The goal was to make Ana look like Marilyn as much as possible, but using techniques that worked for Ana, and not just copy what worked for Marilyn,” says Tina Resler Kerwin, the film’s makeup artist. She changed the expressive shape of the actress’s eyes with the help of eyeliner and false eyelashes in the corners of the eyes, mixed different shades of lipsticks, which had to be examined on black and white film and corrected. Kerwin painted the mole with black and brown liquid eyeliner.

Brows

“The tips of her eyebrows were pulled out as far as possible to the sides, so that her forehead seemed wider. So I created a bend slightly off-center of her eyes and then led them down to get a beautiful shape, ”Lisa Eldridge quotes the words of personal makeup artist Marilyn Monroe.

For filming, Ana de Armas’s accent eyebrows had to be radically changed, lightened and made much thinner. The color was maintained every couple of days, and the shape was corrected daily, making the eyebrows more angular. The film’s makeup artist, Tina Resler Kerwin, said that when de Armas first saw her new eyebrows, she cried. But everything fell into place once the image was fully completed.

Daria Bogomolova