Rita Ora looked like an Old Hollywood screen siren at the 2019 “Camp: Notes on Fashion”-themed Met Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC on Monday, May 6. To complement the songstress’ golden goddess Marc Jacobs gown and platinum blond coif, makeup artist Kathy Jeung dreamed up an ultra-glam 1930s-inspired beauty look complete with bleached brows, a sexy smokey eye and fiercely sculpted complexion, and she’s giving Us a behind-the-scenes look at how it all came together!
“My inspiration for the look was Rita’s gold sequined dress by Marc Jacobs Couture,” she tells Us. “It inspired me to give Rita a 1930s screen goddess look: thin eyebrows, deep contours on the eyes with metallic shimmer on lids, satin-finish bronzed skin and lips lightly lined with a shimmery nude gloss.”
Fully embracing the vintage movie star vibes, Ora was game to bleach her naturally dark eyebrows to match her skin tone so thin new ones more befitting of the era could be drawn on top, but Jeung admits it took some time to get the shade just right.
“The bleaching of Rita’s the eyebrows took a really long time — almost two hours,” she shares. “Since she has dark, thick eyebrows, the process involves the brows turning orange, then bright yellow, then, finally, the skin-like color we hoped to achieve.”
From there, it took the pro about an hour to complete the look, and she says the glam squad (which also included hairstylist Brent Lawler and manicurist Naomi Yasuda) got to work while listening to music from the 1920s, 30s and 40s to get in the mood.
Using a combination of Nanacoco and Rimmel London cosmetics, Jeung tells Us the super skinny arches and dramatic contour were the keys to ensuring the makeup felt appropriately vintage.
“The eyebrow was the biggest focal point and most striking of the look. It was it was important to have two things — bleach and a micro-thin eyebrow pencil like the Nanacoco Browstylers Micro Pencil in Dark Brown,” she explains.
Also a must? Products that could sculpt those fierce cheekbones (not that Ora needed that much in that department).
“It was important to have a lot of dramatic lines on the face — not just the brows,” she says. “Contour was big during the 1920s and 30s. To achieve that I relied on the Nanacoco Contouring & Strobing Palette in Medium.”
For that glittering smokey eye, Jeung first covered her lids in the Nanacoco Eyelusive Eyeshadow Pencil in In The Night (black) and Golden Globes (brown) before layering the brand’s Eyeshadow Quad Palette in Autumn and Elegant on top. The Longwear Eye Liner in Gold provided a nice a complement to her shimmering dress, while the Glitzn Face & Body Pigment in Orange Gold and Copper provided additional sparkle.
A high-contrast glossy neutral lip completed the Old Hollywood look. After lining the pout with the Nanacoco Outlast Lip Liner in Burgundy for “a more dramatic, defined shape,” she filled it in with a mixture of the Rimmel London Exaggerate Automatic Lip Liner in Addiction and the Rimmel London Stay Glossy Lip Gloss in Bare Minimum. Last but not least, the Nanacoco Shimmertallics Metallic Lip Gloss in Sunkissed provided one more dose of shimmer.
“I love doing Met Gala with Rita,” Jeung says. “It’s kind of like a tradition to do another one. It was our sixth together.”
