“I first started working with them a few weeks before Wannabe came out. There was meant to be three girls called ‘Spice’, and was asked if I would do the job,” remembers makeup artist Karin Darnell. “I was like, ‘yeah, of course I’ll do it!’ I hadn’t really done many music people before. It was a really early morning shoot, their first TV programme I think, back in the day when there was CD: UK, SMTV Live, Top of the Pops…all of those. I walked in there and I made Geri up first – she was the thermometer, the one who said ‘yay or nay’ as to whether I got approached by any of the others. She just went, ‘she’s great girls!’ and that was it, I was bombarded. Then I saw Mel C do somersault across the studio floor and I’m like, ‘who are these girls?’ They had so much energy. I was sat there talking to Geri later and saying, ‘oh my god, wouldn’t it be funny if you were on Top of the Pops and were number one.’ After that job, I went off [for] a few weeks to Miami to do some editorials and I came back and they were like, ‘you need to go to the Top of the Pops, the girls are number one.’ It all went mad. I did their entire career – the tours, movie…I still see them now.”
Baby, Sporty, Ginger and Scary: they stood above the rest. The attitude(s), DIY fashion, provocateur prints and expressive beauty looks; they were, and remain, the epitome of 90s Cool Britannia style. Born in ’91, I spent a large portion of one summer holiday persuading my mother to buy me a white dress because it was similar to one Emma Bunton wore. Then came the hair in bunches – and so on (if the #20YearChallenge were a thing on Instagram now, it would essentially appear to be a Spice Girls tribute account, so much did I want to be a sixth member). To mark the big SG reunion this year (minus Posh), we went down memory lane with makeup artist Karin Darnell – who worked with the world’s biggest girl band throughout their entire career, from 1994 to their split in 2000 – to talk high-drama beauty and secrets behind the headlines.
Celebrating the golden age of beauty
“For me, the 90s was all about lip-lines – it was tough and a lot and it was so much of everything. Like the 80s was so much of everything, so was the 90s. You had the grungy Oasis [and] All Saints thing. And then you had the super duper, all rolled into one, which was [the] Spice [Girls] really. They were part of Britpop, but a different part of it. It all happened so fast too, it was different time. Mega-speed in the sense that if you were doing a cover for a magazine the photographer had five minutes! The story behind the picture is what I remember most, not just the ‘look’. Things like trying to put red lips on Geri in a moving transit van, going 80mph on the motorway because in a minute we’re going to have a photocall with Nelson Mandela.”
On Ginger Spice transforming into Jessica Rabbit IRL
“They each had different personalities and looks really. So those looks transpired as we went on, they weren’t there at the beginning. Baby became Baby because [former marketing director of Polydor] Peter Loraine named them that in Smash Hits [magazine]. That’s how it stuck for the media – the journey went on and they became caricatures of themselves. Palette-wise, Baby Spice would be pinks and softness, freckles and spidery lashes. Quite cliché, but that palette was hers. Then Geri went from Hollywood screen siren to whatever she fancied really – that’s when the red lips came on, the arched eye brows…it was Jessica Rabbit. My favourite makeup memory I ever did with them was for the music videoToo Much [below], it was a really big production. It went for a full 24 hours – and the girls at the end of it, when we got the video back, gave me a standing ovation which was so sweet. Geri on that one did want to be Jessica Rabbit; she had a sweetheart neckline, [a] Lauren Bacall wave in the hair, the lips and we’d over paint them. That became more of her look then, she evolved into that. A beauty look is a collaboration between the clothes, the storyboard, the person. Honestly, you just want to do something different sometimes, to do things that were a bit more fun was great.”
Never underestimate the power of a red lip
“The most iconic moment? When Geri kissed Prince Charles at an event [in 1997], which was completely against protocol. It was a ‘king dare’, we were saying ‘you won’t do it!’ I have never put so much red lipstick on one person – it was a long time ago, but I think she was probably wearing a MAC red – and such heavy lip-gloss. It’s amazing it didn’t drip on her cheek [laughs]. We then actually flew to Cannes that night and were reading the papers about it in the morning. We just laughed.”
Britpop beauty 101, pre-social media
“This was pre-retouching, pre-Instagram, pre-computer really. There wasn’t much around at that point. I would get a 20-30mins time slot for each girl. Occasionally I had an assistant to go on set, but it was very seldom I had an assistant to help me. Especially on the road. Most of the time, you used their natural beauty features really. They were very young so the girls had more puppy fat on them so I had to contour them quite a lot – so they always had loads of blusher on. We live in an airbrushed world now but [back then] you didn’t have filters, it was day-lighting. So if someone had spots, and one of the girls really did, I had to alter the looks for that. Most of the time I’d have anxiety, ‘could you see that spot on screen?’ So we’d do heavy eyes. Those looks became the ‘must-have’ because of what we were almost trying to take your eye away from. For instance, there was a hell of a lot of lip-liner going on. What I absolutely say to this day is if you can’t laugh at what you used to look like then you really achieved nothing.”
That time Victoria Beckham had a glam-goth makeover for Tatler
“I remember doing a cover of Tatler [in 1997] in Paris with Victoria Beckham, we took her [Victoria] to the couture shows for the first time and we did black lips and no one had done black lips. My advice for this look? You’ve got to have your face polished to make it look beautiful – a little bit of lash and a soft palette and then do your black lips. Iconic.”
Follow Karin on Instagram @karindarnell.
