Alana Wright — BLANK to BEAUTY

CHEMICAL ENGINEERING to MAKEUP ARTIST

““You have to be your own cheerleader; your own biggest fan. “”

Ashley Rubell: What did you want to be when you were growing up?
Alana Wright: A chemical engineer. But, for a cosmetics company.

AR: You always knew you wanted to do that?
AW: It was sealed by 11th grade. I definitely knew by then that I wanted to go into the beauty industry with engineering.

AR: What instilled that in you?
AW: I guess my parents made sure to have a balance of the arts and science for me, but I have always been a beauty girl and I just always loved everything beauty. My mom, not to brag, but she’s a beautiful woman. She wears makeup and just watching her get ready, even though it’s not nearly as detailed as it is now with the modern woman... I was always fascinated by that. Being a child, I watched a lot of t.v. and a lot of glamorous women in the eighties and the nineties. I was fascinated with Sam Fine in the mid-nineties and his work. I just noticed beauty trends in all the music videos I watched every single day.

AR: Oh my gosh, music videos.
AW: Music videos! The women were sooo glamorous. All the tv shows… I just noticed all the makeup, so I knew that I wanted to do something with that. I think it was one of my physics teachers who gave me the idea. She was just a substitute teacher. And I told her I wanted to be a chemical engineer because at my school we had the college prep programs and there were all sorts of programs that we could choose from, and I chose chemical engineering in the ninth grade. In my physics class I remember she was like, “oh yeah you can go into cosmetics with that.” I was like, “ohhhh…”

AR: Ohhhh, wow!
AW: Mrs. Abdula. I think I only had her that one class, that one time. But what she had said to me really stuck with me. All it took was that one time for her mention of it.

AR: That was the inspiration.
AW: That was the lightbulb. It was like, huh. I don’t have to take the typical automotive, chemical, petroleum route for engineering. So that’s where I got the idea from.

AR: When you were studying engineering, did you feel creative towards it? Did it fuel any sort of creative outlet for you?
AW: Well you know the whole foundation of CE is critical thinking, finding solutions and problem solving. They're definitely things that I still use and apply to makeup. I worked at MAC throughout undergrad so, you know, people would look at me and say things like, 'can she even read?!' Because I always came to school dressed. I had my makeup on and I did the whole thing. It doesn’t have to be either or? I don’t have to look like a bum to come to class. They didn’t get it. It was like a cultural divide. I was one of very few American women in my chemical engineering class. It was me and three others.

AR: Wow. So now that you do makeup full-time, what are the parallels that you’ve found between these two things? How do you think what you learned in engineering has actually shown up and made itself applicable in your day-to-day work life?
AW: Basically just in process. Whether it’s conceptualizing a shoot or a look, it all requires a process by design and critical thinking. Some think that makeup is a shallow art form but I don’t subscribe to that. There can be depth in any profession, so long as you put your all into it and you’re dedicated, it can be rewarding. I get to see people light up because they feel good about themselves, rather it’s the everyday woman or a model… You see the difference you make from doing someone’s makeup. I enjoy making people feel good. So I mean, it’s just being thoughtful and really just never turning your brain off.

It is creative. Chemical Engineering is basically process design. It’s determining how to create finished goods from raw materials. It could be a process within a process, or it could be the overall scope… and that can be applied to anything. There’s so many different routes to get to the same result. What’s the most cost effective? What’s the most environmentally sound one? Every day I think to myself, 'how am I going to do this wing liner? How am I going to get this done in a short amount of time? The client wants it done now…’

AR: Yeah. You have to work within a set of parameters.
AW: Exactly. You work within your parameters! Doing things efficiently, effectively… all those things come from, in my opinion, having an education. People don’t think that. They might scoff at even reading that but I think it’s true.

““There can be depth in any profession, so long as you put your all into it and you’re dedicated.””

““If you’re not appreciated somewhere, move on. Use that time to work on doing your own thing.””

AR: So you worked at a M.A.C. counter while you were in school. Once you graduated, how did you go from getting this degree and working at MAC to doing what you do now, being a freelance makeup artist?
AW: Right. Well, the plan was never to keep working at M.A.C. even after I graduated. I just knew I was going to get some corporate job in cosmetics in New York because I thought I was some kind of unicorn or something.

AR: I love that. “The Plan.” The plan that we all make for ourselves that never really works out.
AW: Yeah!! And it’s a very exclusive club to be in. I had no idea how much of an exclusive club it was going to be to get into product development in this industry. I couldn’t get a job within my field - nothing. I was basically just shut down. I couldn’t get an interview. Not even from applying online. I still put my all into my job at MAC. My mom instilled it in me, ‘once you have a job, don’t quit’ unless you have another job lined up that’s better.

AR: How long were you at MAC?
AW: I worked at MAC for 7 1/2 years. Which was a very long time for me. I understood my mom because she’s from the baby boomer generation where when you get a job, you KEEP it. But in THIS world, what no one tells you is that you want to get as much job experience as you can. If you’re not appreciated somewhere - move on - use that time to work on doing your own thing. Hindsight’s always 20/20, but I really am grateful for the experience I did have. And I really do believe everything works out the way it does for a reason.

So I was there for 7 1/2 years. I didn’t really do shoots or freelance that much because I didn’t know that I could. No one told me that I could, or what those options were. It wasn’t until I left MAC that I realized my potential as a freelance artist. I was going to keep staying and hoping someone recognizes my talent and decides to take me under their wing, and that’s just not how life works. You have to be your own cheerleader; your own biggest fan. Eventually I started freelancing for other different brands like Laura Mercier and Nars and Chanel -

AR: - and you just applied for these things through the brand’s websites, or what?
AW: I just knew people who were already working for these brands. And of course, I eventually got tired of that. Because you know, I’m back on the retail hamster wheel, not yielding the results that I desired.

AR: Yeah. It takes a lot of time and experience to realize what's going to work best for you specifically.
AW: I had to stop and say, wait, why am I doing this? I have a lot of friends from college who are up here in NY, who work in publishing or whatever. And anytime they had a project or something [that needed makeup] they would call me up, and I would hop on the megabus and drive up. Eventually I got put on the assistant roster list over at one of the top artist agencies. I used to lie about my address for so long. For the longest time I used to say that I lived in Harlem but really I lived in DC.

AR: OH. MY. gosh!

AW: So I would get calls saying, “oh we have a shoot tomorrow” and I would be like, “alright, I’ll be there!” and then I would literally just find some way to get up here. Rather it was amtrak, my car, or a bus… I always found a way. I made it happen. Then it got to the point that it was just too much and I was up here multiple times a week, or even once a week, and again I thought Wait why am I doing this? This is so dumb. I always thought since I was a kid, a teenager, that I would end up going to New York. I always loved New York. People used to say to me, ‘Alana. New York is going to swallow you up. You can’t do this. You can’t do that’ but I realized, I’m already doing it and making it work as it is, so why can’t I? So I got on Craigslist and I would refresh the page every five minutes until I found this listing that was juuust reasonable enough. It was a shared apartment. $875 with all utilities included. Month to month.

AR: That’s unheard of.
AW: Yeah AND I had a dog. I still have a dog. And my roommate was ok with my dog! So it was meant to be. I found that listing on a Friday and I moved in the following Wednesday. I just left everything behind. I packed my car up to the brim. Thank God for my friends for helping me get up here. Then I jumped right in. I was living here and I was freelancing, and it was crickets for a while! I would think oh god what have I done, what am I going to do?! but I just made it work. I had to make it work because failure just wasn’t an option… at that point in time. It just wasn’t. I got on many different assistant lists and formed many different relationships. And I had a hard time with that at first because, well, I pride myself on being a pretty genuine person. I didn’t like the idea of networking because I didn’t want people to think I was out there like, well what can you do for me?

AR: Right. I completely understand.
AW: But I ended up forming a lot of genuine bonds with a lot of different people. And so far this has been my journey! Now I only assist my friends and I assist people that I feel I can still learn from, but I’ve been blessed to find a lot of stuff on my own too. And that’s just where I am. I feel like I could always be busier. That’s just how I am, but I’m so grateful for everything that’s happened and everything that’s unfolded for me so far. I have no regrets about anything. I’m happy that I’m here. I get to look at my degree on the wall when I go home to visit and I think yep, I did that too. And I’m doing something else now.

AR: What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned as a freelancer?
AW: Customer service is never turned off. Before, when I was at a counter, that was all about customer service. If an older lady comes in and swears that she wants a bright orange lipstick and that’s what she wants, you better find a way to give her what it is she wants without insulting her. It’s the same thing with a client on set when you’re doing a shoot. Sometimes it’s about meeting in the middle but it’s always about providing them with that good service and ensuring they’re happy. And of course, just being good at your job. And again, I want to say that friends are so important -

AR: -having friends in the industry? Or just your friends in general?
AW: Yeah just friends in general. I don’t talk to people every single day. I’m a hermit. I don’t go out that much… but when you have other people that believe in you, things just sort of come your way. Being nice, being a genuinely nice person… it really helps. You have to learn to stand your ground too, you don’t want to be taken advantage of with trades, or “no budgets”. It’s still your time. It doesn’t matter who you are, everyone’s time is valuable. All that to say, being kind can go so far.

““It doesn’t matter who you are. Everyone’s time is valuable.””

““Always experiment... You have to see things for yourself””

AR: So, what advice would you give to someone who wants to “make it” in beauty?
AW: Well I would say there’re no shortcuts, but you’ve got social media now! You could be working as a janitor one day and all of sudden decide to reinvent yourself, and you could be doing better than me! So I can’t say that, but I will definitely say, never stop learning. Try to assist as many artists as you can and practice on friends to learn different techniques and develop your own aesthetic. Stay updated on fashion and beauty trends, build your own reference library with photography books and fashion magazines, either digitally or in hard copy. Practice on every day people of various backgrounds because that’s where the true talent shines through. Take pictures of your work and I guess, post it on Instagram. The true tale is, practice.

AR: How do you feel about social media’s role on our industry right now?
AW: I didn’t have a problem with it until the standards of beauty started to shift.

AR: What do you mean? How have standards shifted?
AW: I mean, ‘Can you do a highlight? Can you do a contour? Can you make my eyebrows square in the front?’ No! Everyone is trying to look like everyone else! There was a time and place for all that, but now that’s an expectation and that’s what bothers me.

AR: What do you think the standard should be? What's a more realistic expectation?
AW: What you see in magazines. Soft, pretty makeup, the "no-makeup-makeup" looks, and of course some editorial too. There’s room for those super dramatic looks, but it just needs to be more of a balance. Every highlight does not have to be metallic. It can be just a subtle sheen. Gold doesn’t have to go on the tip of your nose!

AR: It’s not a one size fits all.
AW: It’s not. People follow each other and think “oh well if she’s doing this, then this has to be done.” No. Extrapolate from the trends and create your own rules. Do your own thing… as long as it’s polished. And not blended with photoshop, but actually blended!

AR: What advice would you give yourself ten years ago?
AW: Have bigger balls. Trust your instincts. Never let anyone discourage you from anything you want to do, because you can do it. I wanted to move to NY in my early twenties and I should have just done it and pursued this a lot earlier on instead of working to survive. I don’t like that stagnant kind of feeling. I want to feel like I’m on a journey of actually progressing somewhere.

It’s really easy to second guess yourself. There isn’t anything wrong with being your harshest critic. Let someone else reassure you that everything is fine. Don’t rest on your laurels and say, “I did my best.” Always figure it out or always look for what you can do better. It isn’t a mountain top to climb, there’s always room to get better.

AR: What is one thing you consider yourself better at than most people? Where did it come from and how did you learn it?
AW: Ooo haha that’s an embarrassing one. I’d say I’m really good at skin. I can really make skin look flawless and radiant but natural at the same time, even if I’m using eight different products to get there. You would never know it. I'm really proud of that.

Growing up, especially being a black woman, I saw how foundations can get really red-clay-muddy on you really fast. Especially if you have oily skin, a lot of time they can look gray or discolored. Too red, too dark, too light, too ashy. You know, we have to learn all skin tones in order to do makeup. So, I really pride myself in perfecting skin beautifully.

AR: It also sounds like a lot of that is a skill of mixing and blending for individual compositions and complexions…
AW: Exactly! It takes the right balance. Of course I’m always looking at my photos thinking I should’ve done this or that, but so long as the client’s happy I guess! I'm a habitual over thinker.

AR: Where do you attribute that skill to in your experience, the learning of how to perfect such beautiful skin?
AW: I gotta give MAC credit where credit’s due. A lot of people think MAC is just too heavy, but they’re the ones that instilled in me that skin prep is the most important part of any look. Skin care is where you should spend most of your time. I let that get drilled into my head. And of course looking at magazines and films, noticing all the different finishes, and lusting after those finishes with a desire to do it, to create that. I wanted to know how to make someone look beautiful and creamy, or matte… I’m a texture freak now because of that. I’m never happy though, haha. I always look at my work and think man! I could have done that better! You might say I can be a little fussy but you know what? I don’t want to get fried on instagram! hahaha No one’s calling me out! I always do a flash test. Take a picture on a phone and see if anything bounces back.

AR: Even if you’re with a celebrity client?
AW: Yeah, man. People love to take pictures of themselves. They’re always taking pictures of themselves with their friends, and you do not want one off-photo. I will wake up in the middle of the night thinking about off-photos. It really messes with me, so, this is where I spend my time - on complexion.

Always experiment. Don’t let someone tell you 'never do this' or 'never do that.' Don’t listen to them. Try it for yourself! You have to see things for yourself.

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xo