Elizabeth Taylor taught me that if you do your hair and makeup first then take a hot bath right before you leave, it brings out your inner glow and takes away the powdery look from makeup. I do that right before every date.
It's so easy to be insecure about your looks or if you're wearing the right clothes, or your hair and makeup. And I think it's just so important to stay true to who you are.
When you're getting ready, you finally reach a point where your clothes are right and your hair and makeup are right, and you're not comparing yourself to anyone. It's a really great moment. Then you get to the party and it's like, "Oh my god, I'm wearing the wrong thing! I'm garish!" or "I'm underdressed!"
There's this incredible pressure, especially on teens, to be perfect, look right, have the right clothes, date the right people, get into the right school, have the right home life, and so on.
You don't want to try to look younger, because you'll look wrong. You dye your hair, you look wrong. You wear a bad toupee, you look wrong. You wear makeup to hide things, you get your eyes done, you look wrong.
The idea of transformation is super-important to me. You can see it in the way I approach things. I have never been a clean-faced, freshly scrubbed hair person. I'm the New York designer who doesn't do that. I think about the hair and makeup almost as much as I think about the clothes because it all has to work.
I think it's definitely important to look like yourself on a date. You don't want to look like someone else with too much makeup or too much hair.
Thirty was a big deal for me. It was the age where I reevaluated everything - how I approached life and how I thought about myself. When I look at my 20s, or when I look at any period in my life, I think about how much time I've wasted trying to find the right man.
The hair and makeup is very important in a fashion picture. When I create a look for a girl, it starts with the makeup. Sometimes it takes an entire day to find the look.
On TV people look at your hair and then they look at your skin, and then they look at your clothes, and by the time they're listening to what you're saying, you're off the screen.
If you go to my shows, 90 percent of my fans are females between the ages of eleven and eighteen. People look at me like a living mannequin; all of these girls want pink hair. They want the cool makeup and contact lenses and cool clothes.
I'm trying to look natural and not painted. I'm typically fighting hair and makeup teams because I'm always saying, 'Can I wear less? Can I look natural and fresh?'
I think it was the first time in my life I ever felt like I looked “good”. Do you know what I mean? That nice feeling when you look in the mirror, and your hair’s right for the first time in your life? I don’t think we should base so much on weight, muscles, and a good hair day, but when it happens, it’s nice. It really is.
I think it's real important to show style now. The majority of style right now is to act like you don't have style at all, so most companies are getting rich off clothes that look torn, clothes that look worn.
When you look cakey, or you have too much on, and you actually see the makeup, the makeup isn't doing its job. When you use the makeup in a way where the people aren't thinking about the makeup, and they're looking at you, that's what we want.
I had no cares. I was one of those kids: ‘If you laugh at me, laugh at me.’ I don’t have that censor, which is important in this business because you’re constantly told: ‘Gosh, you didn’t look very good. You don’t look pretty in that scene, or you didn’t do that right, or you’d look so much better if your hair looked lighter.’ You really have to have tough skin or you’d end up like a heaping, crying mess all the time.