who is : Alex Box?

Pretty much as soon as the blog post about I:D magazine's portrait shots went up. I got an email from someone asking me who Alex Box was. So I decided that I would pop up a few photos and a little info on Box for you.

Alex Box is on my own major inspirations for some of the make-up malarky i was involved with back in the day. I love how she uses the face like a canvas to produce some of the most beautiful looks and quite frankly, works of art.

She has produced looks for Stella McCartney, McQ, Karl Lagerfeld, Gareth Pugh to name a handful since she graduated from Chelsea college of art. Her work has been featured in Vogue (all of 'em, from Italia to UK to Japan), I:D and W. She has already had exhibitions, features written about her work in very influencial magazines and newspapers AND is now the subject of a series of portraits by I:D magazine (see below post)

She is currently the creative director of Illamasqua. Which makes sense if you ever see their advertising campaigns and product lists.

She is also rumoured to be developing a foundation which will add a blue tint to the skin. Brilliant! I've been doing it the hard way for years! (mixing blue eyeshadows into white foundations for shows)

Photoshoot for Vogue Italia

photoshoot for Vogue Italia

Photoshoot for British Vogue

Photoshoot for I:D magazine

Alex doesn't consider herself a make-up artist. More an artist who works with make-up. “Art and craft are symbiotic.” “I still have that work ethic of an artist, where it needs to be laboured – you need to see the labour of it for it to have the weight and preciousness.”

While I am sure she uses a lot of her own product, she is not adverse to adding icing sugar, post its, glue and other various objects into her work. Which is another reason I love her. In the past to achieve looks, I have used PVA glue to make dreadlocks and other weird shapes, ice cream sprinkles, lace, rubber, feathers, tin foil (which is pretty tame compared to this) and my outrageous one : covering my entire head, face, neck in a layer of chocolate spread for a photoshoot. It stunk and the heat that you produce naturally - is enough to melt chocolate spread. Which went everywhere. I mean in eyes, mouths, noses....not to mention the state of the room we took the picture in! But it was great fun though. I love people who are unafraid to experiment.

I also love the fact that she grew up in a small town and was the village goth as well. Much like my own upbringing!

“When someone asks you for ‘a kind of blackish white’, you have to be able to react, there is a lot of ambiguity in fashion. You’ve all been brought together to make something beautiful, and when you’ve got the right group of people working together, then usually not a lot is said.”

“You can be in San Francisco or Japan and whoever is subversive is going to look pretty much the same, so now people are having to go to more extreme lengths to do something new – and quite often that creativity reaches its fullest potential in new media"