“Harley Quinn is a character people know,” Lady Gaga says in her Vogue October cover story. The singer, actor, and beauty brand founder takes on the role of psychologist-turned-villain Quinn in Joker: Folie à Deux, which just premiered at the Venice Film Festival and is out to the masses on October 4th. But unlike Gaga—who is constantly using beauty and fashion to shapeshift into different versions of herself—Quinn has more of a signature look, which includes smugdy black eyeliner and a red lip.
For her Vogue cover shoot, Gaga brought in her tried-and-true team to get the job done: makeup artist Sarah Tanno and hairstylist Frederic Aspiras.
“It was a really hot day,” Tanno says of the day it all happened in sunny downtown Los Angeles. “But that sort of added to the energy of the entire shoot. I swear this is the best thing we’ve ever done.”
Gaga arrived with a clean face and one beauty statement: bleached brows. From there, it was all about paying homage to Quinn without veering to far into the realm of costume-y.
“We wanted to reimagine Harley through the high fashion lens of Vogue,” Aspiras shares of the BTS inspiration for the shoot. “I asked myself, ‘what would look like Harley if Lady Gaga playing her for a Vogue shoot?’” The end result of Aspiras’s daydreaming was 10 uniquely cut and colored wigs, all laid out with care for Gaga to review the morning of the shoot.
For Tanno, that meant creating five different makeup looks. “I took moments and scenes from the film, which is very rooted in reality, and recontextualized them through a beauty and fashion lens.” Of course, Gaga’s makeup brand Haus Labs—which focuses on vivid color payoff through clean formulas—was ideal for swipes of taxi cab yellow on her lids and many iterations of a bold red lip. “The trick to getting her perfect flat red lip is starting with an exfoliating treatment. I love the one from Furtuna Skin to get all the dead skin cells off. Then you block the lip—I used the shades Scarlett for the lip then outlined it with Mahogany. Then, I tapped on the Color Fuse Blush in Watermelon on top. Not only does it make the color so much richer, but it also sets the lip.”
From there, Gaga transformed into her Quinn alter-ego. “What happens on set with Gaga is always magical,” Aspiras says. “She transformed before our eyes.”
