Fashion

Dick Page: Shiseido’s beauty tour guide

The runway makeup artist and Shiseido artistic director translates photographs he's shot around the world into eyeshadow.

By Lesa Hannah

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I’m not a social worker,” says makeup artist Dick Page. “I’m not going to come to your house to check you’ve done it right.” Not that I would object to having Page pop in; I’m star-struck by the six-foot-plus Brit, who looks like he should wield hefty lumberjacking tools, not slender makeup brushes. What he’s expressing, though, as he shows me the Shiseido Luminizing Satin Eye Color Trios ($40 each, shiseido.com) he’s designed, is that there are no governing guidelines on how to use them. He’d prefer you act as your own beauty DJ, creating colour remixes that speak to you. “All of the colours have volume control and a degree of intensity in the way you play with them,” he says.

We’re at a downtown New York studio that’s been furnished to look like Page’s home. The go-to runway makeup artist for designers like Michael Kors and Narciso Rodriguez, Page is a foodie who loves to cook and host dinner parties, so the launch event has been set up as if he were doing just that. But instead of making chit-chat over cocktails, he’s guiding me around the periphery of the room, where each eyeshadow palette is displayed along with a photo from his personal collection. He explains that he takes photographs “all the time, everywhere—on holidays, on trips,” and that these shots have served as the inspiration and starting point for each trio of shades.

With a painter’s eye for colour, Page—a former art student—fastidiously created paint chips to match three hues from each photo, adding his desired texture, finish and pearl level, and then submitted them to Shiseido’s labs in Japan. He describes slight subtleties in the shades that seem obvious to him but aren’t as discernible to the rest of us. No wonder there were approximately 300 sample rejects throughout the process; he battled with the lab, pushing for the results he wanted. “I don’t do any half measures if my name’s associated with it.”

As for identifying the reasoning behind his shade choices, don’t bother asking. Page outright refuses to acknowledge the idea of colour trends. “I really don’t give a shit about ‘new’—I just care if things are right.” He operates entirely on instinct, “in the way that you decide how to dress in the morning.”

Page believes those daily decisions—what you wear, how you apply your makeup—tell a personal story. “You can decide what you want to say about yourself,” he says, which is ultimately what he hopes the woman who buys his cosmetics will do, rather than worrying about how to wear them or what they mean. “It’s just makeup. If you don’t enjoy it, there’s no point.” But remember, he’s not coming ’round for a therapy session.

See the palettes and their inspirations.

First published in FASHION Magazine September 2010

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