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Kevyn Aucoin
(February 14, 1962 - May 7, 2002) U.S.A.

Kevin Aucoin

Make-up artist and gay rights activist

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His parents were Nelda Mae Williams and Jerry Burch. A month after his birth he was adopted by Isidore and Thelma Aucoin and was brought up in Lafayette. He showed an interest in make-up at the age of 11 when he borrowed his mother's lipstick to use on his five-year-old sister, Carla, with the help of Way Bandy's make-up instruction book which he had taken out of the local public library.

He realised that he was gay from an early age and he was arrested for wearing purple jeans in town. He received death threats at school and he was also pelted with rocks by fellow pupils. On one occasion two teenagers tried to run him over with a truck. He subsequently dropped out of high school at the age of 15.

He took a hairstyling course at a beauty school in Louisiana. He then took a job behind a cosmetics counter at a department store in Lafayette, but he got the sack after wearing a red plastic coat and leopard-print tie to work. He then took a job selling make-up and skincare products in Baton Rouge.

In 1983 he was beaten up by a security guard in Godcheaux's department store in Baton Rouge. In January 1983 he moved to New York with Jed Root who was then his boyfriend and would later act as his agent. They sold Jed Root's Volkswagen for $1500 and began to do free make-up sessions for models hoping that his work would become known.

His career began eight months later when one of the models took him to the offices of Vogue magazine where the beauty editor liked his portfolio. He was hired to work with the photographer Steven Meisel on a shoot with Meg Tilly. Kevyn Aucoin worked with Steven Meisel for 18 months.

Kevyn Aucoin got a contract with Revlon and in 1984 he helped to develop Revlon's Nakeds range, its first neutral collection based only on skin tones. In 1986 Kevyn Aucoin did his first cover shoot with Richard Avedon.

He was also working with Barbra Streisand, Cindy Crawford, Kate Moss, Linda Evangelista, Nicole Kidman, Elizabeth Taylor, Isabella Rossellini, Jennifer Lopez, Gwyneth Paltrow, Mary Tyler Moore, Janet Jackson, Tina Turner, and Cher, who called him a "genius".

Over the next three years Kevyn Aucoin did the make-up for 18 covers of American Vogue and 7 for Cosmopolitan. He refused to promote products, but developed his own brand and sold it through his web site.

His adopted family founded a gay support group to fight for rights and counsel children experiencing the isolation that Kevyn Aucoin had known. He worked closely with the Hetrick-Martin Institute, dedicated to improving the lives of gay teenagers. As well as gay rights he was also outspoken on gun control and race relations.

In 1992 he tracked down his real mother in a small hamlet in Atlanta, Louisiana. In 1995 the Council of Fashion Designers gave him the only award that they had ever given a make-up artist. Kevin AucoinHis book Making Faces, (1997), went straight to number 1 on the New York Times best-seller list. He played himself in the film The Intern, (2000), and he played the part of a make-up artist in the film Zoolander, (2001). He also played himself in two episodes of the television series Sex and the City in 2001.

He received treatment for a pituitary brain tumour but died from complications arising from a metabolic disorder. He died at Westchester Medical Center in New York. His partner Jeremy Antunes (right on the picture) survived him.

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Source: The Knitting Circle, U.K., http://www.sbu.ac.uk/stafflag/people.html

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