Who is pat mcgrath

After leaving school, McGrath completed an art foundation course at Northampton College. She had planned to undertake a fashion degree but abandoned this when she met the stylist Kim Bowen, who invited her along to watch her work on shoots for The Face and i-D. Her big break came when she received a phone call asking her to go on tour in Japan with Caron Wheeler from Soul II Soul, whose make-up she had done one afternoon three years previously as a favour for a friend.

I cried all the way there because I'd never been on a plane before and I was terrified," she told the Observer in This opportunity led to McGrath working with i-D magazine's fashion director Edward Enninful and, subsequently, being named beauty director for the title - a position which she holds to this day.

Her bold makeup translated well into his striking photo shoots and stood out during the s grunge era, when makeup was often downplayed to the point of non-existence.

This explains why she remains so tight-lipped when I ask what she thinks he might change at Vogue, only assuring me that he will do great things. I remember when I first met him, when he had just started working at i-D, and he was so shy. The appointment of Enninful, a British Ghanaian, is seen by many as a sign that mainstream fashion media — where black cover stars and senior staff members are still exceptional — is finally becoming more inclusive.

McGrath is cautiously optimistic. She concedes that her side of the industry is as culpable. How can you not address the whole world — what are you thinking?

I believe absolutely, the world wants something different, people want back their individuality. Social media was a turning point for McGrath. Thanks to the photo-sharing app on which she currently has 1. Does she mind that nowadays, seemingly everyone on Instagram wants to be a makeup artist? She follows upcoming artists obsessively, reposting their images, even asking them to join her team. A lot of my team met through social media.

I met some brilliant people. Pat McGrath Labs taps into what beauty conglomerates are only just realising: the power of the online beauty geek. These makeup obsessives — men, women, young, old, black or white — reside in the sparkliest corner of the internet and revere beauty as high art. Suddenly I was getting phone calls from around the world. In this Instagram age, says McGrath, the number of beauty obsessives is vast.

They really do want to try new things. It is actually quite technical, and I do believe people love what they see at the fashion shows and editorial, and want to try it. An air stewardess recently told me her eight-year-old daughter watches complex how-tos on YouTube. Dense, glittery eyelids with thick black brows for John Galliano, opaque gold lips at Prada, chunky, stick-on face jewels for Givenchy, metallic highlighter everywhere from Dior to Versace — all were copied by high street brands, and adopted widely.

She has no time for industry snobbery over social media beauty trends, such as contouring and dark, painted-on eyebrows. If you want to be out there in a thick, black brow, then go there, girl! It must be so inspiring. Nowadays, she finds inspiration by obsessively studying films, art history and photography.