When makeup artist Laurel Charleston first met Doja Cat, like any modern celebrity connection, it was thanks to technology. “We connected on social media and our first collaboration was for New York Fashion Week this year,” Charleston said. “She asked me to paint her, and we painted her with webbed makeup art all over her head!” The look is the psychedelic look the “female” singer wore for Vogue World’s street fairs and runway events , moment of rotation, and it sets the stage for a bolder week in the City of Lights – with Charleston playing a role as a good artist.
“Every look we create is a deeply artistic and beautiful collaboration between her, me, and her stylist Brett Alan Nelson,” says Charleston, who started Draw inspiration from every fashion look. Meditation on the origin of concepts is not new to her. Charleston began to recreate fine art paintings using cosmetics as a medium. “I ended up teaching myself different painting styles, techniques and ways of expressing myself with makeup,” she said. After 2019 moving to New York as an orchestra conductor, Charleston began experimenting with test shoots and projects with other Brooklyn makeup artists such as Nathan Sweet, Brian Vu, and Patrick Church. “It was also around the same time that I started my journey to live as a transgender person,” she recalls. “Sadly, the classical music world is (still) rife with many normative gender ideals and transphobia, and a career as a successful, healthy and outgoing trans conductor will be harder than I imagined. But when When the classical world pushed me away, the makeup world embraced me with open arms!”
