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Pablo Manzoni, one of fashion’s first superstar makeup artists, died in February in New York. He was 82.
Né Paolo Zappi-Manzoni, he was the son of an aristocratic surgeon. In or around 1960 he landed a job at Elizabeth Arden in Rome based on connections rather than experience. But his natural talent for painting faces was soon revealed. Manzoni became the go-to guy for local BPs (beautiful people) and glitterati (he is responsible for bleaching Sophia Loren’s eyebrows), but as Vogue would later note, he was most “celebrated for the looks he created for the Italian couture houses, beauty complementing fashion in a way never seen before.” Working with fashion designers allowed Manzoni to push his aesthetic in more fantastical directions—especially when it came to the eyes—and it also mirrored what was starting to happen in the industry at large as the world continued to open up in the postwar period, and the polished lady gave way to the Youthquake and a new individualistic bohemianism.
That free-spiritedness was still in the future when Manzoni relocated to New York in 1964 at the behest of Elizabeth Arden herself. “Those were the days of Jackie Kennedy, and all the models were molded to look like her. It was fashionable to look like somebody famous, because it was a way to be noticed,” the makeup artist would later recall. The fashionable world certainly paid heed when Manzoni arrived: “The great Pablo is now here,” Vogue announced in the May issue, which featured his handiwork on the cover.
Within a year, the man known as “Pablo of Elizabeth Arden,” became the first in his field to be awarded a Coty American Fashion Critics Award. “Elizabeth Arden’s Pablo has done for make-up and the make-up man what Kenneth did for hair and the hairdresser, he has lifted cosmetics from an accessory executed by who knows to an important component of fashion executed by a star,” wrote Priscilla Tucker, a Herald Tribune News Service writer in 1965. “Following the era of the hairdresser,” Tucker continued, “where salons got more fantastic and a woman’s hairdresser began turning up at parties, we have the era of the make-up man,” a.k.a visagiste, or face designer.
For Vogue, then led by the fantasist editor Diana Vreeland, Manzoni transformed models into otherworldly creatures, adorned by zebra stripes or glittering with rhinestones. In the magazine’s December 1966 issue, five pages were devoted to “the festive eye” as seen by “Elizabeth Arden’s brilliant young make-up inventor, Pablo.” (Arden is said to have referred to her protege as the “Picasso of eye makeup.” )
These flights of fancy were just that for Manzoni: an expression of creativity that was closely aligned with fashion, but distinct from the way he viewed women’s everyday existence. Manzoni took a democratic approach to the latter, embracing the idea that we should appreciate, and work with, what we have. “Defects grow on you, whereas perfect beauty is a bore,” he told Vogue in 1973, speaking to his many techniques for transformation, some of which were shared in his 1978 book Instant Beauty: The Complete Way to Perfect Makeup (with an introduction by Vreeland).
In 1979, after 23 years, he left Elizabeth Arden, reclaimed his last name, and began a freelance career from his elegant apartment in the Ritz Tower. He also consulted for Neiman Marcus, and in 1990 became the creative director for La Prairie cosmetics. But his passion for his profession never waned, as a reporter noted in 1965, “Pablo says he has always loved ‘jars.’ ”
