THE EXPERT

MICHELLE RAINER, MAKEUP ARTIST

I caught up with makeup artist Michelle Rainer in Paris for a chocolat chaud -- and to find out more about how her lifelong love affair with beauty began. "My interest in makeup goes back to my childhood. I grew up in Vienna, which is a very colorful, beautiful city with lots of art; inspiration was always around me. My aunt had a makeup shop near my school and I spent the afternoons in there, from when I was ten years old and on. I always had a natural eye for color and I can tell the difference between slight variations.... For me, the [beauty] universe was always familiar and later on, it would become a job. The most exciting aspect for me has always been fashion, and with the fashion goes the makeup... Whether I am working for a magazine or a show. It is all so interconnected. If we promote red on the eye in a fashion show, we also use red on the eye in a beauty story later on. In the end, it is the fashion that gives the direction for the beauty. If there is a lot of blue on the catwalk, there will be blue nail polish out next season. It was not so interesting for me to become a fashion designer or a clothes maker -- so I design faces."