Django Durango

So Mod Interview: Nancy Drysdale

Wellington Wells’ Beautician to the Stars Nancy Drysdale dishes on her clients, career, and secret beauty tips!

Nancy Drysdale is sitting on a park bench in front of the Broadcast Tower. Uncle Jack has just started his gardening show, so Nancy has a few minutes to chat before she needs to get back in the studio, if we make it quick and bring her a cup of toasted chicory.

Nancy is 39 and is the premiere makeup and hair stylist in Wellington Wells. She first came to prominence after her styling for Victoria Byng at the opening of the Bolshevism Against Europe Gala turned Wellington Wells’ collective head. She has since collaborated with nearly every face we’ve come to know and love, from Nick Lightbearer to Sally Boyle. Currently, she is sole makeup and hair stylist to our Uncle Jack.

We sent frequent contributor Mary Ann Evans to chat with Nancy to get her insider perspective on Wellington Wells’ celebrities, fashion, and her own personal beauty tips.

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So Mod: You know we have to ask: what’s Uncle Jack like?

Drysdale: Oh, he’s exactly how you’d imagine, just like he is on the telly! He has this warmth about him that just spreads to everyone else too. No matter how stressed out the crew is when he arrives, it’s like a switch gets flipped the second he walks in and everyone relaxes and is having fun with each other.

So Mod: As his stylist, you must get up close and personal with him. Any juicy gossip to share? Is he seeing anyone?

Drysdale: Sorry, darling. Can’t break the Stylist Vow of Secrecy, you know.

So Mod: Well, if you won’t dish on Jack, let’s talk about you. Is it true that you and Davy Hackney are at odds after you rejected a permanent position with the Clayton Center?

Drysdale: I didn’t “reject” Davy’s offer. I really would have loved to work at the Clayton Center, and I spent a bit of time trying to figure out if I could have my cake and eat it too. Uncle Jack is on several times a day and needs to be touched up before each show though. I simply couldn’t do them both. It was a choice I had to make between them and really, when you are asked to do makeup for Uncle Jack, the voice of the city? For a makeup artist, that’s as close as you come to be asked to serve your country. It’s not just a job, it’s a civic duty. You can’t just turn it down.

I’m not sure Davy understood that. Which is understandable, of course! His work is a civic duty as well. Can you imagine how we’d be dressing if not for him? We’d probably all still be wearing all that sad post-War gingham. His designs are a lot like Uncle Jack’s shows. They encourage people, you know? If we are all dressed in bright, bold patterns, then we feel bright and bold ourselves. It’s such a delight to see the fashion in the Village these days.

So Mod: Hackney also designed the Happy Face Masks that have become all the rage in recent years. Was that not quite a blow to your career, since it makes makeup rather unnecessary?

Drysdale: Oh, I was worried at first, to be sure. If I didn’t know he had a higher vision in mind with them, I could’ve taken it personally. In the end, though, his Happy Face Masks actually worked out in my favor. You see, I mix all my makeup by hand these days. I suppose it says something that everyone loves my looks that I can’t ever find the products I need in the shops anymore. I try to get there as soon as they open but I always seem to be two minutes too late. So I started making my own cosmetics.

The hardest ones to make were rouge and lipstick. Each client needs specific shades to coordinate with their skin tone, no two exactly the same. You cannot imagine how time consuming it is, trying to get Gilead petals and flour and honey to come out to the right proportion for each separate client.

Davy’s masks made it so I didn’t have to bother with that anymore. It was quite a relief, honestly. Now I just have to focus on the eyes, which is the most fun part anyway. Since everyone’s faces are mostly the same now, the place to differentiate yourself is in the eyes. I’ve been doing a lot of a very graphic looks to bring more visual interest back to people’s faces and counteract the masks’ conformity.

So Mod: You did the makeup for Nick Lightbearer when he was on our cover last year. Can you tell us a bit about that look?

Drysdale: For Nick, I used a bit of charcoal for eye liner. Men usually don’t need much beyond a smoothing out, you know, but Nick is a rock star so we could have a bit of fun with him. The smudged out eye liner gave him a rough-edged yet soft mysteriousness for his close-up, like he’s hiding something too big for him to handle alone and he only wishes he could let you in on it so you could be the one to help him. The girls love that, obviously.

So Mod: You’ve gotten quite resourceful with your cosmetic recipes. Do you have any more for the girls?

Drysdale: It’s all eyes right now so you’re definitely going to need some charcoal. You can use it dry as eye shadow for drawing out a cut-crease, but I add a little water to make it into an eye liner paste and a little more water for mascara. It has a very long dry time, unfortunately, but the look is worth it.

You can use flour for eye shadow. If you’re doing a black cut crease, white eye shadow makes for a very striking contrast. If you’re up to a bit of a craft project, though, you can crush some blue currant berries to get the juice out and you can mix that with the flour. You mix that very well, let it dry down, and then sift it until it’s all broken up back into a powder, you’ll have a unique shade of blue. It never comes out exactly the same, so you’ll know your girlfriends won’t have the same color!

Then you want to top it off with false lashes. I make mine out of feathers! You have to dye them black obviously and that’s a whole ordeal. I make a black dye out of charcoal and water. It should be pitch black, so you want it to be so thick with charcoal that it’s almost not a liquid. You leave the feathers to soak in it. I leave mine in for about a month, but you can go shorter if you need to. After you let them dry, then you very carefully cut them in half along the spine of the feather, then cut the halves to size for your eyes. I glue them on with honey!

I also use honey and water to make a hair spritz. The honey’s stickiness helps the hairstyle to keep its shape. You absolutely need it for beehives and bouffants, but I use it on my mod girls with short hairstyles too because it adds shine and keeps them from getting mussed in the wind. Plus, when a guy leans in close, he’ll catch a whiff of the Joy in the water. It’s a bit of a Pavlov trick! Every time he sees you, he’ll think about how happy he feels around you, when really it’s just the hairspray! [Continued on page 124]