Success Quote by Kevyn Aucoin

Risk, for Aucoin, isn’t a motivational poster slogan; it’s a working method. “Huge success and huge failures” frames a life built on extremity, the kind of all-or-nothing appetite that makes sense coming from a makeup artist who treated faces like canvases and celebrity culture like a live studio. The line isn’t just about ambition. It’s about refusing the aesthetic and social safety of “the middle of the road,” a phrase that doubles as both mediocrity and a place where you get hit. Playing it safe is not neutral; it’s dangerous in a quieter way, because it guarantees you’ll never be fully seen.

The intent is almost defiant: permission to be spectacular, even when it backfires. Aucoin’s subtext is that failure is not an embarrassment but a byproduct of taste - of having an opinion strong enough to be wrong in public. That matters in an industry that rewards conformity while selling the illusion of individuality. Beauty culture often demands that artists disappear behind the “natural” look, the seamless finish, the client’s brand. Aucoin, who helped define 1990s glamour and brought a human warmth to transformation, is arguing for visibility: the artist should be legible in the work.

Context sharpens it further. As a gay creative force navigating fame, proximity to power, and the era’s moral panics, “middle of the road” reads like a warning against self-erasure. Better to swing hard, leave a mark, and accept the cost, than to survive by sanding yourself down to something market-friendly.