Allan “Whitey” Snyder was Marilyn Monroe’s Make-up Artist, stylist, and close personal friend. He was the man responsible for turning a sweet but somewhat ordinary-looking young woman into an icon whose beauty has to this day been revered all over the world.
1. Moist makeup for the eyes
This was once thought of as the height of sexuality. Allan actually spread a thin layer of Vaseline or coconut oil over the top of lightweight layers of ordinary eye shadows, in the absence of new kinds of metallic eye shadows.
2. Vaseline under foundation
Before adding foundation Allan always applied a thin layer of Vaseline. This helps moisturize the skin under camera lights and gives it more radiance. Nowadays, the overwhelming amount of foundation creams available can make choosing one a huge hassle, and that approach doesn’t always work. This shouldn’t be completely overlooked though-adding a little to the cheekbones and under the eyebrows will always make you stand out.
3. How to give your lips more volume
In an age when the lips were not enlarged by injections, stylists had to turn to various methods to make them stand out, including one approach involving no fewer than five different shades of makeup. Allan drew on her lips using a chocolate-coloured eye pencil to create the impression of depth. A brick-red colour from the periphery down to the centre was brushed in next. Then a bright red pencil was used, with Allan moving out of the centre to mix the colours. Allan worked these pencils as carefully as possible to avoid spoiling the feeling of fullness and depth to the eyes. Using a cream-coloured highlighter, he then traced a spot in the middle of the lower lip and completed the process by adding a thick layer of balsam (not lip gloss) above.
4. Expressive eyeliner
Allan has always put several layers of eyeliner together. He used a black and brown eyeliner to emphasize the contours of the eyes, then a white one for the inner and outer corners of the eyes and finally added a few red spots to make the eyes look brighter.
5. The secret of white eye shadow
The style of Greta Garbo revealed one particular makeup trick that Allan was able to apply to his muse with success. He applied white-eye shadow in powder form to her eyelids to draw attention to her eyes. He added a tiny spot of similarly coloured eye shadow to the inner corner of her lips, except this time it had a pearl-like feel.
6. Visually reducing the size of the nose
And though she had rhinoplasty, Marilyn Monroe always felt her nose was too big. Their makeup artist easily added a little pink blusher to the tip of her nose to resolve this fear.
7. Working with eyelashes
Marilyn and her stylist have also ensured that fake eyelashes are split in two, adding them only to the outside. This helped make Marilyn’s eyes look elongated and shaped like almonds.
8. The shape of the eyebrows
The appearance of each person’s eyebrows is always special, but Allan had a particular technique he preferred to use with Marilyn: he would always emphasize their form, attempting to make them look “triangular.” First, he did this to subtly minimize the size of his forehead. Allan’s approach worked in this case while giving the eyebrows a triangular appearance runs the risk of looking like “little roofs.”
Source marieclaire Preview photo credit Andre De Dienes, eastnews
