From digital artists to photographers, body sculptors and hair stylists to make-up and nail artists, in our Highlight series, we meet the creatives tearing up the rulebook of their respective fields.

“I believe what I do is different in some way. I like taking risks and never playing secure,” says hair and make-up artist Nadia Stacey. From the incredible towering pastel wigs of The Favourite, for which she won a Bafta, to the colourful make-up looks of Pride and Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, Stacey is behind a few of our favourite filmic beauty looks of the past decade. Now, she is nominated for an Oscar for her striking punk looks in Cruella, for which she drew on inspirations starting from John Galliano to Tallulah Bankhead. “I’ve at all times liked anything left of mainstream, anything different,” she says. “I believe that’s starting to indicate in what I do.”

Growing up, Stacey moved around rather a lot along with her family, spending time in London and the south of England before settling in Nottingham as a teen. She credits her eccentric upbringing in a house filled with obscure music, art and poetry for shaping the aesthetic sensibilities she has today. “Sometimes [my upbringing] seems like a superpower,” she says. “It’s given me all these gems of reference that I exploit now in my work.” 

It was watching The Elephant Man and Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” music video, nevertheless, that basically inspired her to change into a make-up artist. After studying at York College, she worked her way up through the ranks – trainee, junior, artist, then designer – and has since designed the hair and make-up on movies like Beast, Tolkien, and Spike Island, alongside The Favourite, Pride, and in fact, Cruella.

Over the course of her profession, Stacey has emerged as a beauty maverick, equally at home with punk and Recent Romantic sensibilities as she is with rococo and old Hollywood, but at all times giving her own twist. “The Favourite took period styling and turned it on its head and I believe that is kind of indicative of what I wish to do,” she says. “I felt the identical with Cruella. I don’t think anyone would have done similar to I did. I don’t mean higher, I just mean it will have been different.” 

We caught up with Stacey ahead of the Oscars to seek out out more in regards to the means of working on movies and what it takes to make it within the industry.

Growing up, what informed your understanding of beauty and identity and the way in which you presented yourself visually?

Nadia Stacey: I even have very strong memories of being very young, living in the center flat of three in a converted house in Camberwell. On the underside floor lived Betty, a drag queen who would let me wear her feather boa. I used to be sort of transfixed by her and the way different she would make herself look with make-up. Possibly I used to be at all times into drag! I used to be also very aware of the punk scene from older siblings and I really like Debbie Harry. I believe grunge was very influential on me as I felt different to everyone and suddenly there was a movement saying that it was positive to be different.

What drew you to film make-up and hair over editorial or celebrity?

Nadia Stacey: Editorial is all in regards to the moment. Capturing that perfect image. Film characters have arcs and alter and that basically interests me. I even have at all times loved storytelling and I’m an entire book nerd so to give you the chance to make use of make-up and hair as a solution to create a personality is incredible. You get to inform a story together with your craft and I really like that.

What’s your creative process when starting a recent film project? How do you translate the initial creative vision into final beauty looks?

Nadia Stacey: I read the script time and again. I watch every little thing the director has done. If it’s based on a book, I read that. I even have a considerable amount of [visual] reference and photography books, so I then begin to see what was happening on this planet at the moment; what music, fashion and art was on the scene. I feel like this then allows me to assume myself because the character and take into consideration how I might style myself.

I then have plenty of conversations with costume, production design, directors, actors because then beginning to put the world together. Costume is at all times on board first, so they are going to have already began to map out what they’re considering and that then helps to tell me.

Lots of the movies you’ve worked on over your profession have been period pieces. Is that something you particularly enjoy doing?

Nadia Stacey: I wish to recreate things and put my very own stamp on them. I also love the means of getting an actor within the chair of their normal hair and garments and by the point you could have finished you could have created a totally recent person. When that happened on Cruella it was magical. To have Emma transform in front of us was really something. Her voice modified, her physicality, and we knew we had something. I also adore researching different periods, it’s like constant history lessons. I are inclined to not be as excited by contemporary projects.

You’ve called working on Pride one in every of the best moments in your profession. What was the method wish to design the wonder looks for that film and the way was the experience filming it?

Nadia Stacey: From the second I knew I had that film it was an utter joy. To recreate real people and to inform their incredible stories was an entire honour. I had such an incredible insight too since the people bought of their old photo albums and talked me through their looks so I could ask about tiny details that I used to be in a position to incorporate into the design. It was really essential for me to not make it cliche 80s. Sometimes you watch things and everybody has perms or Mohawks and you think that real people didn’t appear like that.

It was also a challenge because half the characters were in London and half in Wales in a tiny mining town in order that they wouldn’t have been as up-to-date with the fashions like London, so it’s almost like designing two different periods. Wales felt very much late Nineteen Seventies and London very much within the 80s. We watched the trailer for that film in the course of Pride in Trafalgar Square and the unique people got on stage to talk to the gang – one in every of the proudest moments of my profession. A dream job.

The aesthetic of The Favourite was restrained but then had these elements of absurdity, which were also reflected in the wonder looks. How did you select once you were going to maintain true to the time period and once you were going so as to add a more surreal touch?

Nadia Stacey: I researched it a lot, I devoured every little thing I could on the period in order that after I began to make those touches they were obvious reasonably than looking like we got the period mistaken. I also had a director, Yorgos Lanthimos, who didn’t worry about that. After I identified a selected detail that folks would have done he said, “how will we know, there wasn’t photography,” so I knew there was creative freedom to have some fun.

The Favourite was a really collaborative process with costume and production design. Sandy Powell the costume designer had a black and white palette for the garments and the ballroom had a black and white checked floor, so I desired to bring that into the wigs and make-up. I wanted the make-up to mirror the black and white lines across the room so this banner across their eyes happened and truly landed itself perfectly into the badger make-up. I also wanted all of the looks to be done very naively with limited products as it will have been on the time.

Congratulations in your nomination for Cruella! A whole lot of the looks were inspired by drag and the gender-blurring aesthetic of artists like Bowie. Why did that feel right for the project? 

Nadia Stacey: The make-up in Cruella is like its own character. She uses hair and make-up as a tool of deception throughout the film, she paints her face and changes her hair to create a recent persona and it occurred to me that is strictly what drag queens do. I really like that moment on Drag Race after they take off the wigs and make-up and also you don’t recognise them in any respect, they’ve used powder and paint to remodel so it felt like exactly what I needed to do with Cruella.

This was also the primary time that Disney had a queer character in one in every of its movies and I believed that was so incredible and in addition it’s 1977 when music artists were fidgeting with gender fluidity of their looks. Ziggy Stardust had been on the scene in probably the most incredible way and adjusted people’s worlds and I believed that might be something so prevalent in Estella and Arties’s surroundings that I could explore that of their looks.

What’s your dream project to work on?

Nadia Stacey: I’d like to do something set in perhaps just like the underworld of Paris within the Twenties/30s, the brothels, the clubs, performers. I even have a book, Paris By Night by Brassai, and I might like to recreate those characters in that book! I might also like to work with Guillermo del Toro – I really like the worlds he creates.

What advice would you give to young artists hoping to get into film make-up and hair?

Nadia Stacey: Learn hair and make-up, in case you are a very good all-rounder you will probably be hired over someone that just does one in every of those. Watch movies and take a look at the sort of artists you would like to work with. Get as much experience as possible since it’s about people meeting you and knowing who you might be as an individual. We work such long hours that it truly is about personality as much because it is skill. If you get in with people they recommend you to others so it’s good to get on the market and meet people. Also, there’s a lot online now to learn so immerse yourself in what you might be captivated with.

What are you currently working on?

Nadia Stacey: Snow White – it’s a number of fun.