April 15, 2015 | People
Mad Men makeup artist Lana Horochowski shares how she achieved the enviable beauty looks for the women of the beloved AMC series (even in the age of hi-def TV), and which character is her favorite.
On last night’s Mad Men, we saw the return (and dramatic departure) of Megan, the show’s resident beauty daredevil. Though she kept her look relatively conservative for packing and moving out of Don’s NYC apartment, her beauty look for lunch with Harry Crane was the epitome of early '70s glamour—a black cat-eye with sky-blue eyeshadow from her eyelid to brow.
Now that '70s fashion and beauty looks are in full effect for the spring and fall, we asked the show's talented makeup artist, Lana Horochowski, to share a few tips on how to recreate the retro-inspired makeup and who wore her favorite look on the show.
Which late '60s/early '70s fashion and beauty icons did you draw inspiration from for this season?
LANA HOROCHOWSKI: As we move into the mid to late ‘60s, women went really, really heavy on the eyes, like crazy eye makeup and pulled back on the skin. So with Megan we did a lot lighter of a wash on her. For example, if you look at pictures of Twiggy, you can totally see her freckles.
Megan’s makeup is definitely the most experimental. What were your favorite products to use for her look?
LH: For Megan, she ran around with a creative crowd and she was in the arts, so we got to play with that a little bit more with her look. Her look sort of changed even though the other women’s looks stayed the same for the most part. [As] for her heavy cat-eye, I like a gel liner. For her, we usually used a Make-Up Forever gel liner or one from MAC, something that was a lot more movable so that you can paint it on—gel is easier than a liquid liner, which can’t spread.
She [also] always wears heavy lashes on the top and bottom, so we used a lot of strip lashes, sometimes two or three sets at once. Because we did go so dramatic with her eyes, we really needed to build the thickness on the lash.
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You’ve shown the evolution of beauty from the late '50s until the early '70s. How did you go about sourcing makeup formulas and ensuring historical accuracy?
LH: Shooting in high definition, it was kind of hard. We kept it as authentic as possible as far as colors. We would call companies like Estee Lauder; they gave us their archive color and we matched it that way. We used a lot of Revlon that was [also] available.
Do you have a favorite all-time look from the series?
LH: Who doesn’t love Joan? I can tell you the exact lipstick she would wear, it was pretty much Joan’s staple—Laura Mercier Baby Lips. [Christina Hendricks] has a lot of pigment in her lips already, so that’s probably what made that color look so bold and so bright on screen despite being relatively sheer. She literally wore the shade almost exclusively.
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