THOMAS THE CREATOR
A free-spirited approach has propelled Perthborn make-up artist Thomas de Kluyver from nightclubs to the helm of Gucci make-up.
A free-spirited approach to painting faces has propelled Perth-born make-up artist Thomas de Kluyver from nightclub dancefloors to the helm of Gucci make-up. By Alison Veness. Styled by Jillian Davison. Photographed by Lea Colombo.
“The way we transform our appearance has changed a lot over the last few years, from using make-up as a mask to a new level of selfexpression and freedom”
Thomas de Kluyver and I are sitting outside Hôtel Providence in Paris drinking chilled water – it’s still steamy in September. De Kluyver is reflecting on the whirlwind year he has had since becoming Gucci’s global make-up artist. The 33-year- old remembers buying lots of copies of Vogue Australia growing up in Perth. “When I was young they were the first issues [of Vogue] I saw. I’d grown up going to raves and clubs and I was really into magazines like Dazed & Confused and i- D, and as I started becoming more interested in fashion, I remember discovering Vogue.” For his debut Vogue Australia story it is very much about celebrating de Kluyver’s individuality, one major eyelash and swag of colour at a time. As he tells it: “It’s about creating looks based on the model’s individual personalities, but also looking back through my archive. So much of my work focuses on identity and gender, and make-up being used as a form of the self.”
Thomas de Kluyver is the master of stripped back self-expression and is at the vanguard of a change sweeping through the beauty industry.
“I think the way we transform our appearance has changed a lot over the last few years, from using make-up as a mask, or something to wear because society expects us to wear it in a certain way, to a new level of self-expression and freedom within make-up which is being celebrated more than ever.”
De Kluyver learnt his craft doing his and all his friends’ make-up when they went to parties and raves in Perth. “Good old days!” he says with a laugh.
As society has become more progressive, de Kluyver has felt more comfortable.
“I love where these lines of masculinity and femininity are becoming blurred,” he says, reflecting on his own self- expression through cosmetics. “I’ll wear a really masculine outfit and I’ve been carrying around the Gucci Zumi women’s handbag everywhere. I wear nail polish every day, sometimes a little blusher in my cheeks … little things that make me feel good. I love that make-up is almost like a fashion accessory and an extension of a person. When I was younger growing up in Perth it was hard; we had to work hard and also be quite brave to express ourselves.”
De Kluyver’s openness and raw, expressive artistry are perhaps what attracted the attention of Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele. “I was in New York on my way to JFK just over a year ago and I got a call from my agent saying: ‘Alessandro Michele wants to meet you.’ I was like: ‘Wait, what?’ Like a dream come true.”
He immediately changed his flight. “For me, what Gucci is doing is so exciting and something I can identify with, and also Alessandro loves make-up. I arrived [back] in LA at like 3am, went to bed for two hours and got up and had breakfast with Alessandro at Chateau Marmont.” De Kluyver says they talked about work processes and quickly found common ground.
“I do a lot of drawing, a lot of research, and approach my work in a similar way to a designer. So even though some elements of it seem simple, everything I do is very considered.”
Both the ride and the pace have been rapid for de Kluyver in the past year, but he describes the Gucci team “like a family” and says the days never feel long because of what they’re creating. “The shoots we do, we work for up to five days in a row. They’re intense, but we create this incredible vibe – the make-up room is so much fun and there’s so much laughter and music. They’re incredible sets to be on, like film sets, and you’re in charge of the make-up of sometimes up to 100 people.”
At the Gucci show last season he had a team of 52 people working for him. “It’s the real deal,” says de Kluyver. “I feel so humbled by it all, though I’m an artist at the end of the day and I approach my work in that way.”
He’s also enjoying working with the brand’s 58-plus strong colours that launched recently and which are featured in a campaign for three new lipstick collections starring Dani Miller from the band Surfbort.
“I always want the person whose make-up I’m doing to own the look. I want them to feel like they’re wearing it, not it is wearing them”
De Kluyver has been championing a new approach to make-up for years and acknowledges this has played a role in his ascent. “That was kind of my mantra: doing make-up as a way to express yourself rather than to hide behind it,” he says. “I’ve always done looks that are quite free and I love it when people wear make-up in a way that is positive, whether it’s completely bare make-up or a whole face covered in colours.”
He says “traditional rules like a full face of foundation” or “the need to wear mascara every day” is changing. “Now it’s about using make-up in whatever way you want. Sometimes I just get some eyeliner and smudge it in, or sometimes I do full glamour, lashes, everything, old-Hollywood make-up. I’m so inspired by people and I always want the person I’m doing to own the look. I want them to feel like they’re wearing it, not it is wearing them.”
He is not on a crusade, though: he does what he thinks will look beautiful on someone’s face. “I always want there to be a beauty to it, so even if it’s like paint smudged on someone’s eyes, there’s something about my work that people can resonate with, because there’s this softness, too.” De Kluyver loves a gender-blurring mix of masculine and feminine, particularly “something that fits in between them both”, and reveals he taught himself early on by trying looks out on his own face. “When I was young, I wore a lot of make-up when I went out clubbing. We used to go to BoomBox in London and I used to wear really hardcore, beautiful make-up. I remember meeting Pat McGrath in a club and her grabbing my face and saying she loved my make-up.”
De Kluyver has been based in the UK for 13 years but says his connection to Australia remains strong. “My father and grandparents with whom I grew up are Dutch, my mother is Australian, I have always felt such a huge connection to Europe because of my family, but ever since I’ve lived there I feel so Australian. I’m so patriotic.”
De Kluyver’s mother is a theatre director and his father is a doctor of politics who teaches at a London university – he’s close with them and his siblings, including four half-brothers and sisters. “They live all over the place, but they’re very proud of me, especially my mother, because she is such a creative person. My family is very liberal. They have a really diverse group of friends, so I grew up with lots of different people around like artists, musicians and writers.”
Although he was self-taught, he says Rebecca Williams of Becca Cosmetics, who is also from Perth, was a big inspiration. “My mum and Rebecca were good friends in high school and I was doing work experience at Becca Cosmetics and she gave me a few make-up books, one by François Nars, Makeup Your Mind, and Stéphane Marais’s Beauty Flash. I taught myself by copying the make-up in those books on my friends in high school.”
“Rebecca is so passionate,” de Kluyver says. “I love people like that; it’s such an inspiring thing. I surround myself with people who love what they do and bring this kind of energy. Everyone is there wanting to do the best job they can and we all just push, push and push and try to do the most exciting things, to do something new.”
His favourite make-up artists, apart from Nars and Marais, include Serge Lutens and Inge Grognard.
De Kluyver’s first book, All I Want To Be, was published by Idea in 2019, showcasing looks such as faces almost stripped bare and accentuated with extreme colour, epic eyeliner or a smudge of lipstick. His work is irreverent, fresh, naughty and modern.
His main focus for now remains Gucci. “It’s really exciting to be launching products that I’ve been working on with Alessandro. It’s always really important to keep pushing my work forward every season, no matter what it is.
“I look back and see moments that were brilliant, but you can’t keep repeating yourself, so I look at more innovative ways of doing makeup and using ingredients. Working with Gucci Beauty and with their cosmetic scientists is a whole side of the industry and business that I wasn’t exposed to before. There are a lot of new challenges, and my goal at the moment is nailing all of that. I’ve had a big year.”