Kevyn James Aucoin was born February 14, 1962 and died May 7, 2002. He was an American make-up artist, photographer and author.
Aucoin was born in Shreveport, Louisiana and grew up in Lafayette, Louisiana, with his parents Isidore Adrian Aucoin and Thelma Suzanne Melancon, who adopted him as an infant through Catholic Charities of Alexandria, Louisiana. He had three siblings, Carla, Kim, and Keith, all of whom were adopted as well.
Aucoin was interested in makeup from the time he was a child, and frequently did his sisters’ makeup and photographed the results with a Polaroid camera—something he’d do throughout his career. Afraid to buy makeup, he would shoplift it. The guilt of stealing and fear of getting caught made him stop.
He realized he was gay at age six, and was frequently bullied at school. His parents were initially in denial of their son’s emerging sexual orientation. The bullying continued in high school, and he dropped out after being chased by several classmates in a truck. He enrolled in beauty school and had hoped to learn more about applying makeup, but ended up teaching the class instead.
At 18, Aucoin worked in a small corner of an exclusive women’s store in Lafayette. But the women were uncomfortable with a man doing their makeup.
In 1982, Aucoin moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, hoping to start a career as a makeup artist. While there, he was assaulted by a security guard at Godchaux’s, a local department store. He was there with male friends to check out new makeup, when the guard approached them and said “upstairs or downtown”, meaning they could be taken to the store’s security office or be arrested. Aucoin and his friends opted for the security office, where they were beaten by security personnel. Fearing for his life, he decided to move to New York City with his then-boyfriend Jed Root (who sometimes posed as his manager) to begin his career.
When he first arrived in New York, Aucoin was putting makeup on test models for free to build up his portfolio before he was discovered by Vogue. For the next year and a half, he worked daily with Vogue photographer Steven Meisel. In 1984, he collaborated on Revlon’s Nakeds line, the first line based solely on skin tones. However, his Vogue cover shoot with supermodel Cindy Crawford in 1986 took his career in a new direction. At his peak, he would often be booked months in advance and could command as much as $6,000 for a makeup session. His motto was that it was far more important to help a woman feel beautiful no matter what, and that makeup was simply his tool for helping her discover herself. A proponent of the philosophy that every woman is beautiful within, he was one of the best-paid celebrity make-up artists in history.
He began writing a column for Allure. He would refuse to do the make-up of models he felt were too young.
In 1983, Revlon hired Kevyn Aucoin, at the age of 21, as Creative Director for their prestige Ultima II line of cosmetics. A year later, Aucoin would launch The New Nakeds (later renamed The Nakeds), a groundbreaking line that was a strong counterpoint to cosmetics available at the time. He worked to design makeup for all skin tones. The idea was to empower a woman by revealing her natural beauty, and not to cover her up with layers of product.
Later, Aucoin would work with Japanese cosmetics giant Shiseido on their Inoui line. He would later be approached by both Vincent Longo and Laura Mercier to endorse their eponymous lines, but decided to launch his own brand, Kevyn Aucoin Beauty, in 2001 instead.
Aucoin lived with his partner, Jeremy Antunes, whom he began dating in 1999, married in an unofficial ceremony in Hawaii in 2000 and thereafter referred to as his husband. He had also previously been romantically involved with Eric Sakas, who remained a close friend after their breakup and became president and creative director of Kevyn Aucoin Beauty.
In September 2001, after having increasing amounts of back pain and headaches, Aucoin was diagnosed with a rare pituitary tumor. He had been suffering from acromegaly resulting from the tumor for much of his life, but it had gone undiagnosed. He underwent a successful surgery and had the tumor removed, but continued to experience pain. Aucoin began taking increasing amounts of prescription and non-prescription painkillers to ease his physical and mental suffering. Antunes implored Aucoin to get help, and while Aucoin tried to recover, he could not stop the drug use entirely.
Aucoin died on May 7, 2002 at Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla, New York of kidney and liver failure due to acetaminophen toxicity, caused by prescription painkillers. Despite his instructions that his ashes be scattered in Hawaii where he was married, Aucoin’s remains are buried with his mother in Louisiana.
You can visit his website HERE