Any beauty lover worth their salt knows the trailblazing impact of Val Garland. In fact, over her three-decade career, you’d struggle to find a designer, magazine, photographer or celebrity face that she hasn’t, to borrow a phrase from her 2018 tome, Validated!.

Whether it’s painting tattoo-like ejaculating penises on models for Vivienne Westwood, bedazzling Björk, transmogrifying Gareth Pugh models into bug-eyed aliens with Venus flytrap lashes, becoming L’Oréal Paris’s first global make-up director or inspiring Gaga’s legendary 2010 MTV VMAs meat dress, the only constant is Garland’s approach to her craft: gut instinct and unbound creativity.

“I come at a beauty story from an artistic point of view,” the make-up legend tells 10. “That sounds wanky, but I always want to make a visual image. I have a few ideas up my sleeve and I see what happens – I’m not really a planner. That probably goes back to where I started in the ’80s. It was all about making it up as you go along and finding the beauty in imperfection. I like to disrupt a bit rather than it being all lovely.”

Back then, when Garland was starting out, she began making waves in hair, not make-up. After “stomping out” of school as a teen, she hoodwinked her way into a salon, with no prior experience, quickly learning on the go after years of self-transformation. “I wanted to be noticed for being different, not for being beautiful,” she says. “I went through this stage of burning my hair, so I had this sort of sticking- out-everywhere hairdo and my mother always used to say to me, ‘Why do you make yourself so ugly?’ But I quite liked being the odd kid. I had this wild imagination and would make up stories of what I thought was really happening, but wasn’t. I was convinced I was an alien.”

Determined to find her own path, Garland ended up in Sydney, Australia, opening her own salon, Garland & Garland. Cutting and colouring during the day and partying at night, it was the spark that lit the blaze of creative expression that was to come. “I was heavily in the gay club scene, it was fantastic and where everything happened,” she recalls. “We lived for the nightlife and would be making outfits out of dishcloths, bin bags and bandages. Australia gave me a taste of being whoever I wanted to be without any fear. I was already experimenting with make-up and it just took off.”

from left: Esther wears Les Beiges Healthy Glow Foundation, Le Liner de Chanel High Precision Eyeliner, Rouge Allure Velvet in 48 Ardente lipstick, Rouge Allure Velvet in 72 Infrarose lipstick, all by CHANEL Beauty and Esther wears Les Beiges Healthy Glow Foundation, Le Liner de Chanel High Precision Eyeliner, Rouge Allure Velvet in 48 Ardente lipstick, Rouge Allure Velvet in 72 Infrarose lipstick, all by CHANEL Beauty

Transplanting back to London in 1994, Garland quickly fell in with the creative crowd bubbling up in the city. “I started working with Katy England, Eugene Souleiman and Nick Knight. Katy introduced me to Lee McQueen and Nick introduced me to John Galliano. Dazed and Confused was a brand new magazine from [editor] Jefferson [Hack] and Rankin, and they had all these young photographers: Mert and Marcus, John Akehurst, Horst Diekgerdes, Phil Poynter, Norbert Schoerner, Sølve Sundsbø. They were all experimenting and doing things that hadn’t been done before. It was a lot more art-based as opposed to conventional and stepping outside the norm. We were all in this melting pot together and out of it came all of these amazing moments.”

Now canonised in fashion history, these legends (including Garland) set the tone for the decade, shooting daring, groundbreaking editorials and putting on seminal fashion shows. “Phil Poynter was taking a Polaroid of me, [and the stylists] Katy England, Alister Mackie and Malcolm Edwards, and I remember Alister lent over and said ‘This is a historic moment’. I feel so lucky and privileged to have been with all those people at that time and grown with them. When you’re surrounded by other creatives that are leaders in their field and they want to give something a go whether or not it’ll work, it gives you the adrenaline to jump into the abyss with them.”

London’s youthquake is probably best exemplified by McQueen, a one-of-a-kind force who enlisted Garland to key the make-up for some of his most lauded outings. Whether it was transforming models into haunting porcelain dolls for Voss (SS01), emulating sweat-drenched dancers for Deliverance (SS04), or plumbing Pierrot for the noir clown looks that closed What a Merry-Go-Round (AW01) – the creative collaboration with the late designer remains the zenith of her career. “It was pretty powerful because we were crossing boundaries,” she says. “The shows were phenomenal. You’d be backstage and you’d hear the beat in your heart because the music was so loud and aggressive. Thank God I had that time with him because there is no other Lee McQueen.”

Garland’s transformational time with McQueen led her to work with another originator – after catching the eye of a young Lady Gaga. Back then, a burgeoning pop star hungry for global domination, the artist was integral to the Rolodex of characters throughout her Fame Monster and Born This Way eras. “She was an open book at that time, so you could go in many, many different directions,” Garland tells me about working with Gaga on the music videos for Edge of Glory, Judas, Alejandro and Yoü and I. With her bleached brows, intricate liner and glitter-covered lids, the make-up artist’s impact is immortalised on the cover of 2011’s Born This Way – her motorcycle-mounted head made even more manic with alienesque prosthetics protruding from the cheeks and temple.

While two powerhouse creatives might be enough of a fill for other artists, Garland hungered for more. Thanks to BBC Three’s Glow Up: Britain’s Next Make-Up Star, which first graced our screens in 2019, a new opportunity arose to nurture a new crop of make-up artists. “Just before I arrived in London in 1994, somebody gave me a break and that started off my career, so I’ve always thought that you have to help the next generation. There’s enough work for all of us, but you have to give back,” she shares on what enticed her to make her TV debut. Now in its sixth season, it’s a comfort watch: Garland and fellow make-up artist and partner-in-crime Dominic Skinner are at once tender and tough, pushing the contestants to reach the industry benchmark. Amid tears and tantrums, there are triumphs too, notably when contestants receive a jubilant ‘DING DONG!’ – the ultimate mark of validation. “When the show came along, I didn’t know if it was going to go past series one, but working with all of this talent and seeing the hunger, fear, anger, frustration, joy and utter determination of each of these artists is jaw-dropping to watch and to be a part of,” Garland says. “I’m still in regular contact with quite a few of the artists that have appeared on the show and they come to work with me on a regular basis. They’re getting integrated into our community, which is pretty special.”

If they weren’t already familiar with Garland, Glow Up introduced her to a whole new generation of make-up lovers. A symbiotic relationship, when she’s not amplifying their work on her social media platforms they’re paying homage to her extensive back catalogue on theirs. Most recently, her SS16 look for Gareth Pugh – think chic bank robbers, with models’ hosiery-covered faces glammed up with campy blue eyeshadow and red lips – re-emerged, immediately going viral. “What’s fabulous is seeing young talent take an idea and give it a new voice – I love to see a reinterpretation of it,” she says.

“Let’s be honest, my idea wasn’t original, I got my inspiration from Leigh Bowery. Nothing’s new, but the reinvention of an idea is a new phenomena and I love seeing what the next generation is doing because that’s how we grow and make new ideas. I don’t like to say the word trend, but we make new movements.”

As well as inspiring its community of creators, you’ll also find the woman herself on your For You Page. As warm and engaging as she is on your TV screen, watching Garland’s videos is akin to getting tips from your beauty-obsessed friend: everything from product recommendations straight from her kit to behind-the-scenes insight into her plethora of renowned looks. “I decided if I’m going to do something, it’s going to be raw,” she says of her down-to-earth approach. “I’m an older woman and this is what make-up looks like on an older woman’s face – it’s not filtered at all and what you see is what you get. I’ve had a long career in this job and there are little nuggets that I do on an everyday basis that somebody else wouldn’t realise. I think it’s important to share. Why not?”

At this stage in her career, you’d be forgiven for thinking Garland has seen it all, done it all and got a stack of T-shirts to prove it, but she’s still as motivated by make-up as when she first picked up a brush. Look no further than the pages of this very magazine, or the new faces that inspire her, from model of the moment Alex Consani to South African pop sensation Tyla. “I like to create something new and turn an idea upside down and inside out,” she says. “I’m still inspired.” It’s a trait she shares with the next generation of artists, who are similarly unbothered by boring beauty ideals and determined to keep pushing the dial. “Today’s youth culture is more individualistic, they want to have a persona. Maybe they want to be a creature, a furry, or whatever they want to be who they are. Make-up plays into it a lot more and we should all embrace it.”

What should they do if they want to be the Val Garland of tomorrow? Unsurprisingly, for a question she’s been asked countless times, she’s well-prepared with a necklace-full of pearls of wisdom. “Don’t listen to anyone else, don’t copy anyone else. Be true to yourself, be authentic. Keep banging on that door, keep going, ‘Let me in, let me in’. Find your tribe, find your people and grow with them, because the people you’re kicking out with in a photographic studio are the people who are going to be on your journey. Try different things, listen to music, go to art galleries, do life-drawing classes or sculpture. All of these things can help hone your career instead of looking at another make-up artist’s work that’s already been done.

“You want to be the next Val Garland?” she concludes. “No. You want to be the next you.”

Taken from 10+ Issue 7 UK – DECADENCE, MORE, PLEASURE – on newsstands Dec 6.

@10magazineaustralia

VAL GARLAND: FIRST IMPRESSION

Photographer ROB RUSLING
Fashion Editor SOPHIA NEOPHITOU
Make-up and Creative Director VAL GARLAND
Text DOMINIC CADOGAN
Models ESTHER FINCH at Elite Models and WENLI ZHAO at Next Management
Hair MASSIMO DI STEFANO
Manicurist JENNY LONGWORTH
Digital operator MATTHEW ALAND
Photographer’s assistants JENNA SMITH and OLIVER WEBB
Fashion assistants GEORGIA EDWARDS, MARIA SARABI and JOSHUA BEUTUM
Hair assistant LEANNE MILLAR
Make-up assistants PAULA MAXWELL and CRAIG HAMILTON
Casting SIX WOLVES
Production MAYOR PRODUCTIONS
Special thanks to GARY MCALLISTER at Streeters and ELLE JOHN at FE Creatives

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