I need to tell you a secret about makeup: You probably need a lot less of it than you think. That’s the gospel according to Fara Homidi, the global makeup artist and founder behind some of the most re-shared beauty moments in modern image-making, from Billie Eilish’s American Vogue cover to the November 2020 British Vogue cover with Serena Williams. Homidi joined i-D live yesterday for an hour-long chit-chat that covered everything from Lilith Fair to lip oil, from a beauty supply store in the California suburbs to an exclusive i-D scoop on her next product coming down the pipeline. (More on that in a minute.)
Let’s start where Homidi did: at home, in a house run by two older brothers whose CD rotation swung wildly between Lilith Fair and Guns N’ Roses. That contradiction, she told me, is basically her whole philosophy in miniature: restraint and boldness aren’t opposites, they’re just two settings on the same dial. Her mother tailored her thrifted clothes and ran a salon and beauty supply store, which is where a young Homidi got her first real beauty education. Watching regular women commit fully to one look and stick to it was inspiring, even if aesthetically far away from what Homidi admired in the magazines she read. The heavy brows, the purple-lined lips and absolutely nothing else, demarcations of women so assured of who they were, that it was impossible for the young Homidi not to admire. Her mother was the elegant flip side of that, burnt sienna lips, jade coated eyes, always dressed for the occasion. Oh, and the magazines, the stacks of W magazines and Vogues that a young Homidi discovered at the salon and then studied, making mental notes about the image as a whole; the light, the composition, the models and of course, the make-up.
It being the ‘90s her bed headboard featured an in-built mirror and it’s here that she first started to freely experiment with cosmetics. The suburbs, Homidi admitted, were dull, but her ambition to get out of them only sharpened with age.
Her actual break came assisting makeup artist Lucia Pieroni
and one of her first major sets was a Mert and Marcus shoot with Kate Moss and eight other supermodels, the kind of set that rearranges how you think about the job entirely. Moss is still her reference point, and for good reason: an artist, not a mannequin, who set a new standard for individualism instead of interchangeability.
That’s the throughline of everything Homidi does. If there’s freckles to be brought out and enhanced, Homidi will do it. She’s not taken in by prescriptive make-up looks or ideals and remains enchanted by beauty mavericks like Billie Eilish who challenge the status quo. Take her cover with childhood icon Serena Williams, where the makeup was almost beside the point—the job was earning trust, slowly, until Williams actually let her in.
We also got into the business of it all. The Fara Homidi brand has most recently landed at Mecca in Australia, and Homidi has a theory for why it’s working: proximity. Beach light, outdoor skin, sun that actually touches your face, the exact ethos her visual identity has been chasing the whole time. Australia, in short, already looks like a Fara Homidi campaign.
Then, her philosophy stated plainly: You need a lot less than you think. Homidi proved it live, walking me through her cult face compact and a bronzer technique so light-handed it barely qualifies as touching your face- instead, product dusted on the back of the hand first so as to allow a single upward sweep to change the whole structure of my face with such subtlety, or, a finger tap of highlighter placed strategically, showing and telling us all that it’s the small, incremental additions that transform while allowing the person to still look like themselves (just a bit hotter, let’s be honest). Then, together, we tried her newest launch, the “Blonzer” in Baie—and I’m obsessed. Swept over the cheeks and critically, the bridge of the nose, it achieves that first sun exposure, day one of your long awaited summer holidays vibe, that fresh prickly pinky-gold look that happens the day before you hit peak-tan. Total Richard Linklater ‘70s California, hazy and a little sunburned in the best way. It reads less like makeup and a lot more like weather, minus the skin damage. We rounded out the look with her Lip liner in Faun, layered under her Lip Oi in Tawny. Very Hans Feurer editorial.
Her carry-on essentials? For the record: She never travels without Shiseido’s Benefiance Wrinkle Smoothing eye cream and The Cream from Augustinus Bader, or, naturally her Essential Face Compact.
And then, we got a scoop, because apparently that’s just what happens when you go live with Fara Homidi. I asked about her signature kitten-lash effect eye look that’s essentially mascara fanned outward at the corners of the eye, in lieu of being applied in a straight up fashion, and, instead of answering, she reached off camera and produced an unmarked silver tube. She wouldn’t say a word about it. She didn’t need to. She demonstrated some application, the brush was noticeably unique in shape…there’s undoubtedly a mascara coming, and it’s going to be a whole moment. You heard it here, first.
We closed on dream clients: Angelina Jolie, and Zendaya, naturally, and the one word to describe the Fara Homidi woman. Homidi said “busy.” I said “effortless.” We landed, correctly, on both.
Missed it? It’s live now on i-D’s Substack. Tune in and then run, don’t walk, to buy your own Blonzer compact and live out that Euro girl glow, now.
