digital imologue

If you’re super sleuthy and very observant, you’ll have picked up that I’m a bit of a David Bowie fan. If you need a quick reminder of what there is to love about the guy, check this out quickly.

I could bang on all day about his awe-inspiring, before-his-time approach to entertainment, image, performance, reinvention and alter-ego, but you don’t have all day.  Suffice to say he’s a bitchin’ rockstar from Mars.  People (or Martians) like David Bowie don’t come along all that often.  Lady Gaga is the only one who immediately springs to my mind as anywhere near in the same league of experimental, high-concept creativity.  And let’s face it, she is not shy about displaying his influence on her either.  Come to think of it, she’s got lightning bolt makeup in one of her videos, doesn’t she?

Let’s have a quick perve on his Labyrinth look.  That hair!  That crotch!

There are a lot of David Bowie ‘looks’ I plan to recreate, but today let’s talk about the one that I sported for a dress-up party in July 2012.  The pub hosts a dress-up party every time it’s Friday the 13th in any month, and they choose a theme and everyone gets right into it.  The theme for this one was ‘hippies’ but I wanted to be David Bowie on his Aladdin Sane album cover, so I just went right ahead and did my own thing.

Cool, huh?  Here’s how I did it.

1. Watch a handful of tutorial videos on YouTube.

2.  Go!

I used a really pale concealer pretty much all over my face as foundation, which was dense and tight and uncomfortable to wear, and I have since bought an Illamasqua foundation that’s pretty white, which I’ll be using next time I need to go super-pale.  Even paler than I already am, I mean.

One of the instruction videos I watched used sticky-tape to get straight lines, but I found it easier to go freehand  – using a lip brush and pink lipstick for my lightening bolt, and blue cream makeup for the blue accents, I just painted it on in long straight strokes.  Speed and confidence are your secret weapon when it comes to straight lines.  There is gold eyeshadow on my forehead and pink eyeshadow on my eye sockets to set the lipstick and stop it from smearing everywhere.

I had a half-assed go at covering my eyebrows using a gluestick, but this is an area of continued improvement for me.  Haven’t quite nailed the covered-eyebrow yet.

There’s a bit of contouring done at the collarbones, temples, cheekbones, jawline, sides of the nose, chin-bum and above the cupid’s bow/top lip.  For that I used a cheap dark brown bronzer followed by an apricot blush to blend the edges off.  I still wanted the contouring to be quite exaggerated, as in the original David Bowie picture the contrast is quite high.

David Bowie does not have a generous mouth, but it’s more generous than mine so I relocated my lower lipline for the evening with a nude lipliner, and filled in my lips with a beigey-goldy lipstick.

Mullet is stylist’s own.

Stay tuned for more Bowie album cover re-creations, coming soon.

Tags: Aladdin Sane, costume, David Bowie, dress up, fancy dress, Goblin King, Illamasqua, Jareth, Labyrinth, makeup, makeup for men, men with makeup, Ziggy Stardust