"I'm known for making women look beautiful – that's my USP," Charlotte Tilbury declares when we meet in her north-west London studio. All around her, chic young women dash about, toting bags of cosmetics and giant photos of female celebrities whom Tilbury, a celebrity makeup artist, has helped to look beautiful, including Kristen Stewart, Penélope Cruz, Naomi Watts and – who else, Charlotte?
"Oh everybody, everybody. I'm a lot of people's favourite go-to. Jennifer Lawrence, Jennifer Lopez, Anne Hathaway, lovely – oh, what's her name? – Rachel Weiss, Gwyneth Paltrow, um, Rebecca, Rebecca, what's her name? Victoria Beckham! Oh, and ET, you know …"
Er, Elizabeth Taylor?
"No, no, no! ET!"
Emma Thompson?
"No! Little girl!"
Drew Barrymore?
"Yes! Drew Barrymore. We love her!"
Spending time with Tilbury is like hanging out with the most fun elements of the fashion industry in human form. She is hilariously, unself-consciously over-the-top, swishing her long red hair from side to side and swinging about her 5in heels (not even being four-and-a-half months pregnant can push Tilbury into flats) and the word "fabulous" comes out of her mouth with almost tic-like frequency. She seasons her conversation with references to celebrities and A-list destinations, such as the Chateau Marmont, the Venice Biennale and the Berlin film festival, the way other people might refer to doing the shopping. But instead of any bitchiness and exclusivity, there is a lovely warmth to Tilbury, which partly explains why so many female celebrities insist on getting her to do their makeup for red-carpet events, even if she can't always quite remember their names.
"Pregnancy brain, darling, pregnancy brain! But I've had to turn so many down – Beyoncé, Madonna, Gaga. Amazing women! But my schedule is just insane."
Beyoncé will have to get used to disappointment, because Tilbury's schedule is now more hectic than ever, thanks to the rise of the red carpet. The celebrity world has come a long way since the days when, as Vanity Fair reports this month, Michelle Pfeiffer used to blowdry her own hair before going to the Oscars. Now, how a female celebrity looks at an awards ceremony is scrutinised at least as intensely as her work. This is unarguably a ridiculous state of affairs, but it is good business for Tilbury and she, like the rest of the fashion industry, has sensed that the real focus is not the runways, but the red carpet.
When we meet, Tilbury has just returned from LA where she was doing the makeup for the Golden Globes and is packing again to fly to New York the next day for New York fashion week. After that she'll do London fashion week but this year, for the first time, she is skipping Milan and Paris, arguably the most important of the fashion weeks, in order to return to LA to do makeup for several A-list celebrities going to the Oscars (she's not allowed to name names before the event, as is the usual case with makeup artists and designers).
"I can't just be fashion, darling, I need celebrity, too. The red carpet has become just this insane industry and so much more pressured. The awards season is like fashion week now, with all the pressure and parties and the whole circus comes to town and you're just exhausted at the end. Some celebrities will always ask for me, such as Jennifer [Lopez], or Penélope [Cruz], or Naomi [Watts], and it just made sense to focus on that. Penélope and I, we love each other, and she says: 'But no one else can do my eyes like you!' Hahahaha!"
There is something very American about Tilbury with her – I would say refreshing, others might say shameless – fondness for self-promotion, but this skill has doubtless helped her in Hollywood, a town that has about as much interest in self-deprecation as it does in foreign films. And the truth is, Tilbury does, as she says, make women look very beautiful, which is what celebrities want on the red carpet. "Celebrities are especially insecure about ageing, and maybe staying slim, too. But there's trickery you can do with makeup, and no one knows that better than celebrities," she says.
Ever since she was a little girl growing up in Ibiza, the daughter of artists, in her "ridiculously girly" bedroom covered with posters of stars such as Marlene Dietrich, Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor, Tilbury has been fascinated by this trickery.
"So Jennifer Lopez has the most beautiful face but she wants to give herself amazing facial framework, to bring out her killer cheekbones and chisel around her nose, so we do that." (Translated into English, this means Tilbury uses shading and highlighting to give Lopez more emphasised cheekbones and a narrower nose.) "Celebrities want to make their cheekbones shine, to soften their pores, to know they'll look good from all angles and in HD. It's a nightmare! So I'll make sure it looks good from all angles and in all lights, then they're fine for the night, maybe taking just a lipstick and lipgloss in their bags."
Is it difficult keeping up with all the plastic surgery trends in LA? One year, all the celebrities have filler, the next they have Botox, and so on, which must require different kinds of makeup.
Tilbury looks a bit flummoxed for a second, but she quickly recovers: "I have to say, the people I work with don't look like they've had loads of surgery. Oh! Demi Moore – I do a lot with her," Tilbury cries out, suddenly, for some reason, struck with a memory of Moore.
While some might decry this pressure on female celebrities and, in a larger sense, women in general to look perfect, Tilbury takes the opposite view: "Makeup is empowering. It really is. I remember when I was a teenager and the first time I put on makeup. People reacted to me so differently. At first I was like: 'I can't believe this.' But then I was like: 'You know what? This is a good thing and I'm going to roll with it.' When a woman feels like she looks good, she feels more confident," she says.
It is a sign of both Tilbury's belief in the power of makeup and, more significantly, the public's fascination with the red carpet that she has just launched a cosmetics line specifically aimed at recreating her work on the red carpet for the public.
"My range is about red-carpet-to-reality," she says, a typical Tilbury soundbite. "I want women to say, 'I want Jennifer's killer cheekbones' or 'I want Penélope's smokey eye', and the range lets them do that," she says. This slightly cheesy sell somewhat undermines the line – both the makeup and skincare are fantastic and among the best on the market – but as Tilbury knows better than anyone, celebrity, not quality, is what sells.
"The range is entirely designed around celebrities and the red carpet, because celebrities feel closer to real women than models, and everyone wants to look like their best selves," she says. Or better yet, apparently, like a celebrity.
