Dick Page reveals his truest colors
The other side of make-up artist Dick Page
08 12/12 UP
Text:Tiffany Godoy Photo:Courtesy of Jed Root Translation:Miho Matsumoto
A common misconception about fashion types is that they only like to talk shop -- that they sit around all day with friends obsessing about the latest trends and the hottest upcoming models. But New York-based British make-up artist Dick Page is cut from a different cloth. Page has an anti-fashion approach to his work and life and a finely tuned bullshit detector -- and he likes to keep it that way. There is more than meets the eye to this master of cosmetic illusion.
Page has been instrumental in some of the last decade's most influential ad campaigns -- think Yves Saint Laurent, Marc Jacobs. He regularly works with New York-based Dutch photographic duo Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, and German photographer Juergen Teller. He may be known for his impeccable use of color, but few know about Page's wicked sense of humor, so black it could only be British. His accent is thick and his language very, very blue.
I had the chance to catch up with Page on one of his many visits to Tokyo. He has been shuttling back and forth between Tokyo and New York for the past 10 years, and in 2007 was named Creative Director of Shiseido's The Make Up line. As we sat on a terrace overlooking Omotesando midway through his second straight day of beauty and fashion magazine interviews, he was starting to tire of talking about the Japanese beauty industry and the latest trends in cosmetics. Instead, we chatted and sipped red wine under a warm late-fall sky and I got to know about his Bristol roots, his celebrity clients and the serendipitous results of what he calls his "random" work ethic. If bloody butcher shops, eating horse, and knowing which Hollywood starlet is as cool as she is beautiful interests you, read ahead.
Dick Page
Dick Page is a British make-up artist and he is currently based in New York.
He has achieved widespread recognition for his editorial and advertising work,
as well as for his more than ten years’ experience on runway shows worldwide.
In 2007, he was named Artistic Director of Shiseido The Makeup.
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- When did you start coming to Japan?
- I first came here in 1997, when I took over the INOUI line. Then they came up with a boutique line which was INOUI ID, which was unavailable anywhere. At its peak it was in nine stores in all of Japan.
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- A little too exclusive!
- Yes! They shut that down and then I took over The Makeup in March (2007). So it was through Shiseido that I came to Japan.
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- Japan is the land of cosmetics.
- The hair is actually more amazing to me because I spend so much time dealing with make-up for shoots and shows, so the hair is always so surprising when I come here. I have a Western bias but I am seeing these cultural extremes but there is nothing more beautiful than thick, straight black hair.
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- But there is none of that anywhere!
- (Laughs) No! None of it! But that is the fetish side of fashion and beauty. This thing where you get a fetish for a hair texture or a color of skin. I like traveling to the Arctic, to places in Scandinavian countries. The farther north you go I start to feel like a short, swarthy Italian. People get paler and fairer and redder and pinker -- so beautiful and so odd. It's a kind of polar extreme like white, white people or Celtic people with freckles and red hair. Then of course there are the Inuit, black hair, dark skin and quite Asian features…the total opposite. I was on holiday in Iceland with a Chinese/American friend, and everyone tried to speak Greenlandic to her because they thought she was Inuit…
