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

Everyone has a beauty spirit animal. Mine is Madonna. Of course it is. Who else? When I look at Madonna – writhing around like a sexy tarantula for her 1994 single - Human Nature, I am reminded of her utter surrender to whatever tableaux she’s hawking at the time.

She’s been earth mother, eighteenth century witch, downtown good-time girl and, more often than not, Hollywood golden-age legend. But whatever the role she’s playing, she does it with every cell of her being. And she owns it completely. Like Linda Evangelista owns the catwalk or Hillary Clinton owns the podium (the other kind).

This is the first of Madonna’s seminal looks that I’ve ever attempted to emulate. But by God, it won’t be the last. The canon of moods, personas and statements she’s given us – and me – is a lifetime’s worth of inspiration. But drilling down into what makes her just so ripe for imitation is simple. Madonna is utterly beautiful.

Look, if beauty, as is often purported by scientists, is a question of facial symmetry, Madonna has it by the truckload. It’s also why she’s cited time and time again by the world’s most seminal make-up artists as a muse for their work.

Her face was made for make-up; the elaborate arch of her generous brows, the carved protrusion of her Italian-American cheekbones and her lips. Those lips. Lacquered here with layer upon layer of the deepest red-violet lipstick and thick, glassy clear gloss, they’re like bulging leather-wrapped thighs.

"And as with everything Madonna, she is sexualised but not objectified. She’ll do all the objectifying, thank you very much"

And as everything with Madonna, she is sexualised but not objectified. She’ll do the objectifying, thank you very much. There is such a visceral inference of power in everything she does, and for this video - a paean to unraveling your own sexual desires – Madonna berates the camera (and viewer) with her command as much as she seduces it with her exquisiteness.

By this point, she knew exactly what she was doing, ably bestriding the twin worlds of pop and fashion so succinctly as shown by this fantastically plastic-goth video directed by the French fashion photographer, Jean-Baptiste Mondino. Presumably why every single split-second still of Human Nature looks like an editorial spread from Italian Vogue.

The glossed, latex catsuit may belong upon the body of a regular attendee at the Torture Garden, but the make-up is as an accessible form of powerful, dark, gothic-tinged beauty as you could ever hope to find.

It’s really not make-up though, it’s facial architecture. And so, it must begin with a strident extension of the brow, not overly defined or furry (Like a Virgin was a decade before) but strict, severe and toned down with a greyish brown pencil line.

After extending my brows as much as they can be without veering into drag territory, I took a pointed liquid eyeliner scribe and pressed it into my upper lash line, and lacquered my lips with every bit of might I could muster. I’m miles from Madonna’s pixel-point perfection, but from this look, I might just have pilfered some of her self-empowered strength. And that’s enough for me. 

1. Benefit Instant Brow Pencil in Brunette, £15
2. MAC Eye Shadow in Mylar, £12 
3. Dior Style Liner in 094, £22.50 at FeelUnique
4. Nars Sheer Lipstick in Fast Ride, £18.50 at John Lewis
5. Dior Addict Ultra-Gloss in Black-Tie Plum, £21 at FeelUnique

Photography: Hugo Yanguela