Paying homage to the most iconic beauty looks of all time and the women that created them

You may not know her name, but know this: the current glug of left of centre musical heroines – the likes of Lana Del Rey, Katy Perry and even the late Amy Winehouse - owe much to the legend that is Tura Satana.

Indeed, you may be more familiar with Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! the 1965 B movie that catapulted her to global notoriety and kept her in the fantasies of men (and women) until her death in 2011.

At the time, the film was described as ‘an ode to the violence of women,’ an irony which was no doubt painfully obvious to Tura herself. At 10 she was set upon by a gang of men and vowed to avenge herself over every last one of them. Soon after, she became proficient in martial arts, which Meyer put to good use in the plenteous fight scenes of Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

"She had been toughened up by life; but her weapons of defense were not fists or knives but her own unfettered sexuality"

Combined with a 60s proclivity towards black-flickered eyes; her look was ignited by a beguiling melting pot of heredity; she was born to a Japanese and Filipino father, while her mother was of American Indian and Scottish descent.

Her face was emboldened and erotic, but mysterious enough to set her apart from the gaggle of showgirls and dancers (of which she had also been) whose cookie-cutter faces and corn-blonde hair appeared on every stage in every town.

She had been toughened up by life; but her weapons of defence were not fists or knives (at least not away from the cinema screen), but her own unfettered sexuality.

Attempting the make-up styling of Tura Satana, as I found, is frought with risk; it is so easy to veer into drag territory. Only a character as large and looming as Tura’s could effortlessly carry off this sort of X-rated glamour. So save it for a night when a show-stopper is all that will do.

In practical terms, however, it’s easier than it looks. It’s simply a case of taking the usual motifs and exaggerating them. Brows become enlarged and elongated, lips are stained with the sort of pigment-ambiguous raspberry red that all the lipsticks in the 60s somehow proffered.

But it was the outsized slash of liquid liner – stretched across the lid like a crow in full flight – that is guaranteed to give any non-professional palpitations. There is only one way to do it: draw a ruler-straight line from the middle of your eyelid diagonally up and outwards. Then trace another from the outer corner up to meet it, fill it in and hope they both look somehow similar at the end. Decade after decade, her eyeliner never faltered.

If you’re on the hunt for a less-than-obvious heroine to ape for Halloween, you could do a lot worse than assuming the unapologetic glamour of Tura Satana.

1. Topshop Smokey Eye Palette in Glass House, £12
2. Shiseido Natural Eyebrow Pencil in Black, £19 at Feel Unique
3. MAC Liquidlast Liner in Point Black, £15
4. Eylure 65th Anniversary Lashes in The Chelsea Look, £5.25 at Asos

Photography: Hugo Yanguela