Paying homage to the world's most iconic beauty looks and the women that created them

It is difficult to not be drawn to Sharon Tate, the 60s American actress who has been sealed into the canon of Hollywood history, not by her dramatic performances (at least, not by those alone) but by her devastatingly abrupt and violent death. Perverse? Possibly, but such tragedies are also a matter of empathy, of objectivism, of human biology. Aren’t they?

Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, there are acres of them, all tragic heroines, all adored, cried over and glorified. Sharon Tate, joined them at just 26 years old when she was murdered – at eight and a half months pregnant - at home in Los Angeles in 1969. The perpetrators, the notorious Manson family, were jailed for her murder and the murders of four others who were there that night too.

She was, at that point, a fledgling TV and movie actress, whose resume read like a crossword; more black dots than words. One possible reason: Sharon Tate was widely described as almost debilitating shy, especially as a child and so – as the old Hollywood fable goes – it took many men; influential directors (she later married Roman Polanski) and actors to bring out her out of her shell and onto celluloid.

"Tate was dogged by less than favourable critiques, many of which pointed to her expressionless face and rigid timidity"

She endured more than her fair share of damp squib and turkeys (Valley of the Dolls, has reached cult status down to it’s sheer inaptitude), but she certainly didn’t lack ambition, once declaring, ‘I’d like to be the American Catherine Deneuve.’ Yet, Tate was dogged by less than favourable critiques, many of which pointed to her expressionless face and rigid timidity and retrospectively, seemed all the more barbed based on her ridiculousness prettiness. 

She had that thing that Kate Moss has in spades, sexiness without gaudiness; a sexiness that doesn’t alienate other women. It makes women want to be like her. Facially, she’s a mélange of Alice Temperley, Anja Rubik and Rose Byrne, but there’s something about that 60s soft-focus photography that casts a gently veil over what is, in reality, quite a heavy-handed make-up look. 

On Sharon, lightly-feathered brushed up brows appeared ethereal, natural. On me, they looked excessive, mannish (possibly due to them being brown, not blonde). Sharon’s overt, skipping doll lashes looked seductive, tempered. On me, the outsized lash looks pantomime-ish, insane.

In my zeal to recreate the doe-eyed perfection of Sharon Tate’s archetypal look, I overshot it by a good few miles. Perhaps that’s how it should be; the tragic heroine, who 44 years after her death, remains as untouchable and distant as ever.

1. MAC Veluxe Brow Liner in Deep Dark Brunette, £15.50
2. Laura Mercier Baked Eye Colour in Mythical, £18.50 at Selfirdges
3. Eyeko Liquid Metal in Black Onyx, £21 at SpaceNK
4. Chanel Levres Scintillantes Glossimer in Bagatelle, £21 at Selfridges

Photography: Hugo Yanguela