New book celebrates the subversive genius of make-up artist Inge Grognard

Inge Grognard, Makeup 1989-2005 is a new book from the young publishing house  Zegris Books that showcases the early career work of make-up’s great iconoclast. Inge Grognard’s career launched in the mid-1980s when she became the make-up artist for the Antwerp Six, including Dries Van Noten and Ann Demeulemeester, as well as her childhood friend Martin Margiela. 

Inge Grognard make-up explored

Since then, Grognard has worked with Balenciaga, Haider Ackermann, Hood By Air, Vetements and more; but the new beauty book primarily focuses on her work in the Antwerp fashion scene of the late 1980s to the early 2000s, where she pioneered her signature subversive, do-it-yourself style.

Images show models with a bold painted-on unibrow, or deliberately misapplied mascara, or blanched, monochromatic features. The results are captivating and also challenging; they pose philosophical questions about our perceptions of beauty as much as they titillate our aesthetic sensibilities. 

As Olivier Zahm, co-founder of Purple magazine, writes in his introduction for the book: ‘Grognard’s beauty revolution is essentially feminist. She uses make-up as an artistic gesture, an intimate revolt, one that allows each woman to reclaim her beauty, her inner turmoil, her hidden conflicts, her fragility and to reach beyond the masculine imperative of seduction.’ 

He continues, ‘Her work marked both a brutal break with traditional beauty conventions and a leap into the future with an aesthetic that is still defining the beauty of tomorrow.’ 

Indeed, as Grognard’s recent work with Balenciaga, in particular, has shown, she is still one of the most innovative forces in the industry, constantly reconfiguring our definitions of beauty. 

Inge Grognard, Makeup 1989–2005, £20, zegris.media