Hair and makeup in the Melbourne CBD and Southbank
I come to your hotel room, apartment or venue across the city: the CBD, Southbank, Docklands, South Wharf, East Melbourne and Carlton. Middle Park is fifteen minutes from the city, so travel on a CBD address is a few dollars rather than a line you have to think about.
City bookings almost always happen in a room somebody has checked into for one night. That is a different job from a house. The room is smaller than you remember from the photographs, the good window faces the wrong way, and the only mirror with light around it is in the bathroom, where there is space for one person.
There is no minimum here. One face is a perfectly ordinary city booking, because I am not driving an hour to get to you. Studio prices are the lower ones; ask me to come to you in the CBD or Southbank and the travel stays under twenty dollars for most addresses.
Makeup and hair styling portfolio
What a hotel room does to makeup, and what I bring for it
Hotel lighting is built to be flattering, not accurate. Warm bulbs above and behind you hide exactly what needs checking: where the foundation stops at the jaw, whether the blush is even, how the shimmer behaves. Skin that looked perfect at seven in that room can look grey in a photograph taken by a window at eight.
So I bring my own light and set up away from the bathroom, usually beside the window with a lamp filling the other side. It takes five minutes and it is the difference between makeup matched to a lamp and makeup matched to daylight. The kit, a proper chair and the lighting all travel with me, so the room only has to provide a power point and a corner.
Two practical things worth knowing about city buildings. Loading in takes longer than it should: apartment towers want a lift booking, and hotels want you at reception. And a room booked from three in the afternoon is no use for a nine o clock start, so if the morning is early, the night before has to be booked too, or we work from someone else's room.
Where the day is actually happening
The stretch from the river through the CBD holds more wedding and event venues than any other part of Melbourne, and they are all within twenty minutes of my studio. What the makeup has to do changes with the kind of room:
- Riverside hotels and towers. Crown, the Langham, Sofitel, Grand Hyatt and their neighbours. Long evenings under warm indoor light, photographs on a balcony in daylight first, and hours between the two.
- Warehouse and event spaces. Metropolis, Showtime, Alto and the converted floors around the top of the city. Dim, dramatic lighting and a room full of people until late.
- Rooftops and terraces. Hard afternoon sun with glare bouncing off glass on all sides, which is the one genuinely difficult light in the city.
- Corporate and gala nights. Awards, launches and end of year events, where the makeup has to read from a stage or across a table and still look right in a photograph taken on a phone.
Marrying further out? The Peninsula, Yarra Valley and Geelong each have a page, and mobile bookings cover what lies between. Closer in, there is a page for St Kilda.
Start times, parking and how early is early
The car can be moving at 4am, brushes out by 5. In the city that matters less for weddings than it does for flights, breakfast events and anything at the racecourse, where being ready by seven is normal rather than heroic.
Two numbers decide it: the hour everyone has to be finished, and how many faces. Give me those and you get the time I am knocking. Larger groups get a second pair of hands, and you are not charged for it. A hotel room is booked by the night and the day has a start time, so the work has to fit the window rather than stretch to fill it. It also means the number of people I can take is higher than the online calendar shows on its own, so write to me with the figure instead of assuming the morning is full.
Parking in the city is what it is. I build it into my own timing rather than yours, so a hotel with no loading zone means I leave earlier, not that you start later. Service by service, the numbers sit on the pricing page. Hair goes by length, set out on the page for hair styling. Travel stays a separate line and you see it before booking.
Made to last the whole night, and often the next day
Staying put all night is the thing clients come back for, and a city evening is where that gets tested: a ceremony at four, photographs outside, dinner, and dancing until the room empties. The base goes on in layers built to survive that, not to look best in the first hour.
Clients tell me they wear it into the following day. One washed off the foundation, left the eyes as they were and went out again. That is not what I plan for, but it is a fair description of what the finish does.
Booking works the same either way: come to Middle Park, or have me come to you. Bridal mornings run differently and are set out on the bridal page.
Book in the city
Send me the date, the hotel or address, and how many of you there are. You get a start time and the travel figure back before anything is confirmed.
Online booking is for the studio in Middle Park. For a mobile booking, send an enquiry instead: travel time is planned by hand, and the start time and travel fee are confirmed first.