Avant-garde runway and texture
Val Garland
British makeup artist known for avant-garde runway work and for a deliberately destructive, texture-led approach.
Written by Lamyaa Aissi, a working makeup artist in Casablanca. This is a technique analysis, not a biography — what this artist changed about how a face is built, and what survives on a real client.
Against neatness
Nearly all commercial makeup is an argument for control: clean edges, symmetrical wings, blended until nothing is visible. Her work goes the other way on purpose — smeared, cracked, pushed past the point where a beginner would panic and fix it.
The reason this is worth studying even if you will never shoot it is that it exposes a habit. Most artists stop at the point where the makeup looks tidy, which is not the same as the point where it looks good. Tidy is where you stop when you are unsure.
Imperfection has to be built, not left
The common misreading is that this work is careless. It is the reverse. A smudge that reads as intentional is placed, with a specific edge, on skin that was prepared to receive it. A genuinely accidental smudge looks like a mistake, and everyone can tell the difference instantly without knowing why.
The skill being demonstrated is control of the edge — knowing exactly where a shape stops being soft and starts being sloppy. That is the same skill a perfect blend requires, applied to a different end.
What a working artist actually takes from it
Not the looks. The permission. Once you have watched someone deliberately break every rule and produce something better than the rulebook, the small risk in front of you — a stronger lip than the client asked for, a rougher edge on a smoke — stops feeling like a risk.
Clients rarely ask for the thing that would suit them most, because they ask for the thing they have seen. A little of this is what lets you offer them something better.
Where it does not belong
On a wedding day. A bride is not an editorial subject; she is a person who will look at these photographs for fifty years and who wants to recognise herself in them. Experiment belongs in a test shoot, on a trial, on your own face — anywhere the stakes allow it.
The judgement is knowing which of the two you are working on.
Questions
What is avant-garde makeup for if nobody wears it?
It is where technique is developed before it filters into wearable work, and it trains judgement about edges and proportion. Most commercial trends began as a runway idea several seasons earlier.
Should a bride try an experimental look?
On the trial, yes — that is exactly what the trial is for. On the day, no. A bride will look at those photographs for decades and needs to recognise herself in them.
The other artists
Booking in Casablanca
Bridal, editorial and special-occasion makeup, on location across Casablanca and Morocco.