Montreal Makeup Artist Carole Méthot has a style that you have to see to truly experience. While you could try to describe it with words like grungy, haunting, fantastical and unsettlingly beautiful, there’s something about her approach to her craft that cannot be boxed in with labels. That something is undoubtedly what has set Carole apart, and what’s helped her cultivate a booming career as a Makeup Artist in Montreal’s fashion and creative scenes after graduating from Blanche Macdonald, the #1 Makeup School in Canada.
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Her work runs the gamut from prosthetics to edgy, editorial glam — sometimes all within one cohesive look. With such a finessed approach to beauty, you might think she always dreamt of a career in makeup. But that isn’t the case.
“[Growing up] I was always painting and drawing, not that I was always good at it,” Carole shares, explaining that she initially thought the arts were calling to her. “But [at that time] I was thinking of myself more as a painter. I was always drawing and painting. So I thought that would be my career.”
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“I saw an ad on Facebook for Blanche Macdonald, and it said it was the #1 school in Canada for makeup and I was like, ‘Huh? A school for makeup?’ Then it started to click, like, ‘Oh shit imagine having a job like that!’”
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Even though she envisioned a different type of artistry, makeup was already a part of Carole’s life too. “I started really expressing my own makeup style in high school. I was doing weird makeup just to go to school. Just doing random, emo stuff. Eventually, I would do makeup on my friends at sleepovers and take photos — these little [photo]shoots, kind of like a MySpace thing. I don’t know why because I didn’t know makeup artistry was a job.”
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So how did she end up turning makeup into a career? “I saw an ad on Facebook for Blanche Macdonald, and it said it was the #1 Makeup School in Canada and I was like, ‘Huh? A makeup school?’ Then it started to click, like, ‘Oh shit imagine having a job like that!’ This was pre-Instagram, so I was not seeing a lot of makeup artists out there. So thanks, Facebook ads!”
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The time in Blanche Macdonald’s Global Makeup program helped Carole develop her skills for her new career path. ”I really liked that the program touched on everything because I didn’t have any experience, except with myself. It was good to see what it’s like to work in TV and Film, what it’s like to work in bridal and to touch all these different avenues.”
Carole has a few classes that stand out as formative for her career. “The prosthetics class, the airbrushing class and the TV and film classes [really helped me]. Those are the hardest things to learn on your own so I benefited a lot from learning those foundations at school.”
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“The prosthetics class, the airbrushing class and the TV and film classes really helped me. Those are the hardest things to learn on your own so I benefited a lot from learning those foundations at school.”
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In the time since her graduation from the makeup school, Carole has accomplished some remarkable things, including working on runway shows for mega clients MIAOU and a famed rap artist who was cancelled shortly thereafter. But she started from the ground up, like anyone else “I started working at a makeup counter, which helped me with the more beauty side. With the freelancing work, I built my portfolio by jumping on Model Mayhem projects and finding opportunities through [Makeup Career Advisor] Heather Sosa.
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Since her early days as a makeup grad, Carole has carved out a successful career as a freelance artist. She’s also cultivated a unique look that brings clients back for more, even if she can’t explain how she found it. When asked about developing her style, Carole laughs, “I have no idea. People ask me that often, but it’s difficult to answer. At the beginning of my career, makeup on Instagram was starting to pop off, so I was trying to follow that formula. The more that I started doing the things I wanted to do, and the more confident I was talking to clients about my ideas, the more successful I became. I don’t know how I found it [but]I think maybe I wouldn’t have been as successful if I was just following what other people were doing.”
