Perfect: Please can you introduce yourself, how long have you been a make-up artist for?
Brooke Turnbull: Hey, I’m Brooke Turnbull. I’ve been a makeup artist for ten years now, since I was 16.
Perfect: What inspired you to become a makeup artist?
Brooke Turnbull: I was such a fairies, face-paint and temporary-tattoos girl growing up, always painting in my room. Then I remember watching America’s Next Top Model being completely in awe. It felt like this whole new world opening up and sparked my infatuation.
Around the same time, YouTube was taking off, and that’s how I taught myself. I would sit in my room after school for hours watching the OG beauty creators, still in my uniform haha.
Perfect: What is the process like working with a talent like Charli XCX?
Brooke Turnbull: Working with Charli is always refreshing.
Beforehand, Chris, her stylist, will share what she’s wearing from there I’ll start gathering an idea alongside the hairstylist of where we’d take it. It’s rarely about copying a literal reference, and more about building from the energy she’s presenting. Then, when Charli is in the chair, I bounce off her feeling and vision, and it becomes this natural open creative exchange.
Perfect: You recently did Charli’s make up for her Music, Fashion, Film gig. Talk to us about the process of creating that look.
Brooke Turnbull: What a night. Charli spoke about an eye focus for this look, and to reflect this epic album coming, I wanted it to feel real. Something raw.
Probably every makeup artist’s no-no, but I applied powder eyeshadow first, then layered a cream on top, letting it crease and move naturally. That technique created this cool, lived-in smudged eye rather than something perfected.
I was excited for the lip because I knew a washed-out nude would be perfect. There’s something late-2000s, early-2010s about it that I love, and it also ties into the world Charli is moving through with this album.
