"Perfection is boring. If a face doesn't have mistakes, it's nothing"
About this Quote
Perfection, Aucoin insists, is a dead end: a surface so polished it stops telling the truth. Coming from the makeup artist who helped define 1990s supermodel glamour, the provocation lands like a corrective to the industry he powered. Fashion sells the fantasy of flawlessness, yet Aucoin is arguing that the fantasy only works when it leaves room for the human. A face without “mistakes” isn’t just aesthetically bland; it’s culturally empty, stripped of history, stress, pleasure, and idiosyncrasy.
The word “mistakes” is doing sly double duty. It’s not only blemishes and asymmetry, but the lived-in evidence we’re trained to erase: a crooked tooth, a scar, a tired under-eye, the shape your features take when you’ve laughed a lot or cried too hard. Aucoin frames those as narrative details, the texture that makes a face legible and therefore compelling. In his hands, makeup isn’t a tool to standardize; it’s a highlighter for personality. The intent is less “stop trying” than “stop sanding yourself down.”
Context sharpens the edge. Aucoin worked before Instagram-face became a global template, but his line anticipates it: the airbrushed, filter-ready ideal that flattens difference into a single algorithm-friendly mask. He’s also pushing against a moral hierarchy where “perfect” equals “worthy.” By calling perfection boring, he flips the value system: the interesting face isn’t the compliant one, it’s the one that dares to look like someone.
The word “mistakes” is doing sly double duty. It’s not only blemishes and asymmetry, but the lived-in evidence we’re trained to erase: a crooked tooth, a scar, a tired under-eye, the shape your features take when you’ve laughed a lot or cried too hard. Aucoin frames those as narrative details, the texture that makes a face legible and therefore compelling. In his hands, makeup isn’t a tool to standardize; it’s a highlighter for personality. The intent is less “stop trying” than “stop sanding yourself down.”
Context sharpens the edge. Aucoin worked before Instagram-face became a global template, but his line anticipates it: the airbrushed, filter-ready ideal that flattens difference into a single algorithm-friendly mask. He’s also pushing against a moral hierarchy where “perfect” equals “worthy.” By calling perfection boring, he flips the value system: the interesting face isn’t the compliant one, it’s the one that dares to look like someone.
Quote Details
| Topic | Self-Love |
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