Hair and makeup in St Kilda
I work across St Kilda, St Kilda East, Elwood, Balaclava and Ripponlea, and the studio sits two kilometres up the road in Middle Park. That short gap changes more about how a booking runs than anything else written on this page, so it is where I start.
Every other area page here has a section about the drive. This one does not need one. Five minutes separate my kit from your door. Nothing dramatic follows from that, it is simply easier: an early start costs nobody a long drive, the travel line on a St Kilda address stays in single figures, and a booking for one person is worth doing.
One face is enough. Nobody needs to round up two friends to justify the trip, since there is no trip to justify. The reverse works as well: book the studio instead, sit under proper lighting for an hour and drive back down towards the water afterwards.
Bridal, evening and daytime work
Light and sun, the two things worth telling me
If the light where you are getting ready is poor, tell me when you book and I will bring lighting with me. Nothing else about the room has to be right.
If you will be out in the sun, say that too. SPF goes on, and I pick a base that agrees with it. Some sunscreens throw light back at a camera flash and leave the face pale in photographs, which is better prevented than discovered later.
What happens to your skin before any colour goes on
Plenty of artists treat primer as the preparation. For me primer is the last step of it, not the first. What comes before depends on what your skin is doing that morning: skin that is flaking gets exfoliated, skin that is tight gets extra layers of moisture worked in and given time to drink them, skin that is reacting to something gets calmed down before anything else is attempted.
I never cut this part short, and it is the part clients rarely see described anywhere. Foundation cannot fix a surface it is sitting on. Prepared skin is why the base looks like skin at six in the evening instead of sitting on top of it.
When you cannot say in advance how much makeup you want
This is the worry I hear most, after the one about whether I travel. People are not sure the look will suit them, and they cannot say in advance how bold is too bold. Nobody can, in the abstract, on somebody else's face.
So it is not decided in advance. You watch in the mirror the whole way through. I work in stages and deepen gradually, and the point of doing it that way is that the face looks finished at every one of them. If the third stage is already you, we stop at the third. Nothing is a step you have to sit through to reach the end.
Brows and lashes on the same short drive
Makeup gets booked for an occasion. Brows and lashes get booked on a cycle, and the cycle is exactly where distance starts to matter. A lash lift lasts somewhere between six and ten weeks, lamination runs to a similar rhythm, so this is an appointment you keep six or seven times a year instead of once. Two kilometres is often the difference between keeping it and letting it slide.
Living beside water changes what people want from it, too. Mascara and swimming have never got along. A lift comes with tint included, which leaves the lashes dark and open wearing nothing at all, and brows brushed up and set keep their shape after an afternoon in the sea. The face comes home from the beach without needing anything redone.
What I do: brow lamination and sculpting, henna or tint, bleach with tint, a lash tint on its own, the lash lift, and facial waxing. Most of it happens at the studio. If you would rather not move, brows and lashes come to you, and on a Monday or a Tuesday nothing is added for the drive. Figures for each of them live on the brow and lash page.
Not every booking down here is a wedding
Fitzroy Street and Acland Street keep the diary mixed in a way the wedding suburbs do not. Birthday dinners, a rooftop before somebody flies out, a hens group getting ready together, a photo shoot at first light because the water only looks like that for an hour. Weddings remain the largest part of the work, though they are nothing like all of it.
A fair share of it is guests rather than the person the day belongs to: someone invited to a wedding, someone going to a party, unrelated people on unrelated dates, sometimes makeup with hair and sometimes makeup on its own. Some of it happens at my end rather than yours. One client sat in the studio chair in the morning and drove down to her own wedding at a cafe on the sand. Another did the same before her birthday. A third married on Fitzroy Street. Being a makeup artist who lives around the corner turns out to matter most on the days people decide something late.
- Every service has a number against it. The pricing page carries a figure against each one, and travel is quoted on its own before anything gets confirmed.
- Long hair takes longer, so it costs more. What each length comes to is written up under hair styling.
- A wedding morning follows its own order. See the bridal page for how that morning is built.
- How early I can begin and how the travel figure is counted live on the page about mobile bookings. On an address this close it stays in single figures.
- Marrying outside Melbourne? Send the date and the place through the enquiry form below, and an answer comes back to you.
Book in St Kilda
Give me the date, the address and how many faces. Back comes a start time and the travel figure, which on an address this close is small enough to surprise people.