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dominant themes: Seattle grunge and Hollywood glamour. One need only look at the sexually charged advertisements they imagined for Gucci (under the direction of Tom Ford) to appreciate their collective genius. Pecheux has also been the man to add a playful, glamorous touch to photographs by Testino and Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin for this magazine, beginning with issue one, which featured actor Jude Law’s handsome visage daubed in layers of multicolored face paint. While Pecheux no doubt continues to dream up imaginative looks for leading magazines and advertising clients like Versace and Givenchy, he makes an equally powerful impact on the runway. Consider, for example, Yves Saint Laurent’s Fall 2008 show, which featured an army of goth fembots, each one sporting a bowl-cut wig and dense lipstick in matching tar-black. It was a landmark beauty moment that inspired legions of ink-lipped imitations. For Pecheux, Spring 2011 is all about hints of deep tangerine—a matte, saturated lip at Marni and a thick swath across the lids at Derek Lam (two of the designers he claims allow him to “express himself one hundred percent”). “Besides working with talented people, actually applying makeup is my favorite part of the job,” he says. “When you do a fashion shoot, you spend most of the day watching other people work. But at shows it’s We have ’80s-era Parisian nightlife to thank all about the makeup for four hours—and I love that!” for Tom Pecheux, as it was the lure of the While Pecheux doesn’t shy away from fantasy, his number City of Light’s over-the-top glamorous clubs, one objective is—and has always been—making the women who like Le Palace, that informed his decision to are lucky enough to sit in his chair look absolutely stunning. focus a then-nascent makeup career on fash- “When Tom does makeup, he thinks of the person being photoion. “In school we were learning about the- graphed, rather than himself,” says Testino. “Most creatives in "26"3*64 ater, movies, ballet, and special effects, and the fashion world think it is most important for their work to be we had to find our focus,” Pecheux recalls. noticed. So when you put yourself at the service of the person “For me, makeup is all about making people look beautiful, so I you are putting makeup on, it’s a sacrifice, in a way. But through immediately realized that special effects was not my thing. Plus, that Tom has managed to bring out his talent and show that no one makes a woman as beautiful as he does.” with movies, you don’t see anything until a year later, after they’ve edited everything, and I can be a very impatient person—so that Pecheux’s sphere of influence has increased exponentially wouldn’t work. And the theater required me to work at night… over the years, thanks to his roles at two major beauty brands. No thank you! The night is reserved for parties, not work.” In 1999 he took over from Serge Lutens at Shiseido and helped While nightlife may have nudged Pecheux’s makeup career them launch the legendary The Makeup, and since 2009 he toward fashion, it wasn’t parties but pastries that brought him has served as Estée Lauder’s creative makeup director. For a to Paris, at age 18, from his family’s farm in the countryside. He brand that historically has not been known for experimentation, spent two years crafting croissants and palmiers before realizing signing a radically creative Frenchman was a major statement. what excited him about cooking couldn’t be found in a cramped Pecheux’s goal for the classic label has been twofold: give it restaurant kitchen. “Making food for people you don’t see or know a dose of backstage cred, and extend its appeal to a broader, was something I didn’t enjoy,” he explains. “For me, cooking is younger audience. “The Lauder products are amazing, and they about sharing, especially with friends—in the restaurant, you cook, have to be; their reputation is based entirely on cosmetics,” he but you don’t share.” Then one night, at a party, he met a girl who says. “If the product sucks, it’s not like they have bags or shoes was studying makeup, and something immediately clicked; two or little dresses to fall back on, like so many other brands do. My months later he traded in his rolling pin for a makeup brush, enroll- goal is not only to have people saying my mother loves Lauder, I ing at L’Ecole Privée des Techniques du Maquillage Artistique want the girls I’m working with every day to love it just as much. Christian Chauveau, the only makeup school in Paris at the time. All that’s missing is a bit of edge, a naughtier attitude. And I can Those first few years as a makeup artist were, by his own help them with that. After all, I’m French!” Fiorella Valdesolo account, rough. But once Pecheux met Carine Roitfeld and Mario Testino, a powerful creative team was born. Working Tom Pecheux in New York, May 2010 together, the trio dreamed up a ’90s aesthetic that was at once Photography Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin Shirt Pecheux’s own provocative and innocent, the antithesis of the decade’s two
Tom Pecheux is The makeuP maesTro behind some of beauTy’s mosT subversive looks and some of This magazine’s mosT iconic imagery. now The creaTive direcTor of esTée lauder, he brings his inimiTable french Touch To a sToried american house
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