THE FACE PAINTER.

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 17-MAR-03

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COPYRIGHT 2003 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

Pat McGrath, a British makeup artist--the most powerful black woman in fashion who is not a model (and not an Irish man, as some of her early clients supposed)--flew to Paris in mid-January with three assistants and fifteen seventy-pound duffelbags that she takes everywhere. (One is marked "Everyday Bag”; another says "Lips”; and six bags hold scores of large-format art books--Fellini, Otto Dix, Andre Kertesz, "Ritual Art of India”). She had been booked to make up the runway models for the couture shows of Christian Dior, Yohji Yamamoto, and Valentino. On the day she arrived, she was driven to a preparatory meeting with John Galliano, to learn about the clothes he had designed for Christian Dior. "On the way, in the van, I'm always paranoid that I'm not...

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