Talking to… DOMINIC SKINNER

Mac’s director of makeup artistry and judge of BBC show Glow Up tells Kezia Parkins about his rise to the top of the makeup industry and his advice for younger generations

When I interview Dominic Skinner, he is sitting in an armchair made of 200 Beanie Babies, looking as colourful and kind as we have come to know him from his role as a judge on the hit BBC show Glow Up: Britain’s Next Make-Up Star and Celebrity Masterchef.

Within minutes of us meeting, Skinner and I were discussing our ADHD, which I was surprised to find out he had only discovered in the past few years. After all, his unflinching determination to do what he loves, commitment to creativity and colourful uniqueness scream neurodiversity. “I now understand, I’m not broken. I got to this place in my life with ADHD, and I and I love it. ADHD got me here,” he says.

At school, Skinner favoured using his hands and being creative and arty over the academic subjects that education often prioritises. “I always leaned into that and knew that was the direction I wanted to go in. Kids know themselves and I think when young people have what society sees as challenges, they’re actually just surviving. If you just let them get on with it and encourage that instead of forcing them to do something else, they will blossom, and grow. That’s certainly my story.”

Photography became Skinner’s route to finding makeup during his A-levels. “What I loved about photography was the instantaneousness of the image. I didn’t have to wait around for the vision that I would see in my head. I could get it quicker than trying to paint it. But then I started using makeup within the photographs to push boundaries and experiment.”

Now, at the peak of his career, as a TV personality, Mac’s director of artistry and author of his new book Glowography, it is clear that Skinner is dedicated to sharing the things he has learned as an icon of the makeup industry. “I never set out to have this life but I was always doing art of some sort,” says Skinner. “I always imagined myself living in a Paris loft apartment with no glass in the windows as a tortured artist… eating baked beans out of the can,” he laughs.

But Skinner ended up becoming a thriving artist and a household name, working with some of the world’s greatest photographers and performers all over the globe as well as leading designers including Jean-Paul Gautier, Alexander McQueen and Vivienne Westwood.

Creativity first

Not the most linear character, Skinner almost reverse-engineered his route into makeup. “When I decided makeup was actually what I wanted to do, I came with a skill set that was more creative led as opposed to beauty led. I was having to learn the craft of beauty instead of the other way around,” he explains. “What happens nowadays is young people learn beauty through social media then try to get into creativity but struggle because they’re so conformed to this idea of beauty and perfection. That’s really where the book came from. I was having conversations with a lot of young people asking the same thing: ‘how do I get to be where you are?’.”

“The truthful answer is, ‘I don’t know!’. There’s no linear path but I made my own opportunities. I found that there were a lot of closed doors, and it was just about being more of a creative thinker,” adds Skinner.

“A lot of young people, due to the education system, lack some of the ability to be creative because they’ve had it pushed out of them from a young age, so I thought about how I could invigorate people to be more adventurous with their makeup, rediscover the joy of colour and play and, at the same time, allow them to discover who they really are.”

Now, with his position as a judge for Glow Up and his role at Mac, Skinner is in the perfect position to inspire the next generation of makeup artists into the industry. “I didn’t necessarily know where I was going or how to get there but I have loved every step of the journey,” he says. “It’s been so full of interest, challenges, wonderful moments and sad moments and I’ve always gone out and got it, every opportunity. I haven’t waited for it to come to me because the perfect job doesn’t get delivered to you on a silver platter.”

Skinner says that these days the perceived importance of in-person relationships and networking has diminished in the age of the social media influencer. “It’s the person that sends that extra email, that extra DM. It’s the person that does that extra makeup look and puts their hand up highest. It’s the person that says, ‘I’ll do it!’. That’s the mental mindset you have to have to be successful in anything,” he says.

Despite social media bringing an influx of opportunities in beauty to young people, Skinner admits that it’s harder for those trying to break into the industry now. “But it’s not impossible. What young people really need to understand is that your skill set is one thing, but your tenacity and your ‘dog with a bone’ mentality is the thing that’s going to help you.”

He adds, “It’s about saying yes to everything… I’ve said yes to some sh*t but this led me to meet other people who allowed me to progress and develop and grow. You will go into 100 crap jobs for one really cool one.”

At the start of his career, Skinner would sit outside modelling agencies to find models who he could make up and photograph to build his portfolio. “There are hundreds of people who want to do what you want to do – don’t just send an email. It’s the person who picks up the phone who is going to get the job,” he says.

Journey to love

After freelancing for decades and saying yes to every opportunity that came his way, a turning point came in Skinner’s career. “When you’re freelance, there’s that initial stage where everything’s new, and you’re trying to do as much as you can, and then you get to the point where you need to start knowing your value. That’s when I thought, ‘enough is enough!’. You have to be very in tune with the ‘right time, right place’ mentality because this is the moment it shifts.”

It was at that pivotal time that Skinner joined Mac, firstly as a full-time educator. “I was still doing what I loved, it was just a different way of doing it,” he explains. It was also around this time that Skinner turned 40, which is when he had a sudden realisation.

“I realised nobody gives a sh*t so wear the crazy shoes, put on the blue lipstick, be your authentic self. Stop worrying what other people think, because no one cares… as soon as that dawned on me, that’s when my life changed,” he says.

“I’ve got to this point in my life where I f*cking love who I am. It’s taken me years to fight the negativity that society puts on queer people, artistic people and neurodiverse people. These groups are often given such minuscule value in society, yet we have tremendous value.

“We are the people who design the mug that bankers use for their coffee… suits have been crafted by artisans to enable the wearer to have the confidence and the power to make big decisions. It’s like we are the secret assassins of society.”

Glowing up

Skinner entered his sixth season of filming the hit show Glow Up, one that has catapulted the career of makeup artistry into the mainstream and given a platform for young artists to express themselves. The show has launched the careers of many new industry names including PB speakers James Mac and Yong-Chin Breslin. “Glow Up has made people more aware of what the beauty industry is and how makeup infiltrates so many different arenas. It’s been eye-opening for me to see the response from the public but mostly from parents, and in particular dads,” he says.

“I’ve had many a conversation with dads, where they’ve said, ‘I suddenly get it’, or ‘I’m not worried anymore’, because before they would have seen their son or daughter playing with makeup up in the bedroom on YouTube, and thought that they were wasting their life.

“Then they have this realisation that, actually, this is their future and they could be really successful. They could tour the world with a future Beyoncé or be in a lab designing the next big makeup product. There is so much scope, and so many places that beauty can take you that to a lot of parents, it’s a scary place because they don’t understand it. But Glow Up has really opened the door and allowed everyone to see exactly what is possible.”

“Careers in the arts have always been more available for white, middle class, privileged people who have financial support of parents,” Skinner explains. “But now having Glow Up show that you can earn money from it and create a great career, it’s enabled the industry to be a lot more diverse, inclusive and accessible.”