How Kirsten Coleman Helped Julie Become a Dynasty Icon for Halloween
Most Halloween makeup is about picking something scary off a shelf. This was about something else entirely: taking one reference photo and, over a laptop camera, actually becoming her for a night.
Julie had her costume figured out weeks in advance — a “big glam ‘80s” homage to Dominique Deveraux, the trailblazing socialite Diahann Carroll played on the original Dynasty. She had the fur hat (a real one, gifted to her twenty-five years ago and finally, finally useful) and the suit. What she didn’t have was a way to translate a single glamour shot into an actual, wearable face before a party that started at 6:30. So she booked a session with Kirsten Coleman, a working Hollywood makeup artist whose real film and TV credits include Euphoria, Sorry to Bother You, and background work on Babylon — and who spends her professional life doing exactly this kind of transformation, just usually for actors instead of party guests.
“You’re Not Playing Julie Tonight”
Julie showed up prepped — skin done, primer already on — so Kirsten skipped straight to the fun part: figuring out how to reshape Julie’s eye into the reference photo’s rounder, more dramatic shape using nothing but shadow and shadow placement.
“It’s all illusions, right?” Kirsten said. “It’s just changing shadows and shapes of the eye.” Working from a cream matte shade, she had Julie pack color well above her natural crease — higher than felt natural, tracing a tall, arched line Kirsten compared, laughing, to Cruella de Vil — to build the illusion of a completely different eye socket. It’s the same technique she uses on actors who tell her a look “doesn’t look like them.” Her answer to them, and to Julie: “That’s why you’re an actor. You’re not playing yourself today.” Julie’s version: “I’m not playing Julie tonight.”
From there it was a back-and-forth of building and correcting — a darker plum shade deepened into the crease with a stiffer brush, then softened with small circles wherever it clumped, then built back up on the side that looked lighter. Kirsten’s approach to imperfection was as much a lesson as the technique itself: “We’re not perfect, we’re not robots… I stop obsessing and keep moving forward.” Once both eyes read as sisters rather than twins, they moved on.
Real Technique, Borrowed from the Era
The specifics were where the session earned its keep. Instead of liquid liner, Kirsten had Julie use a pencil — because that’s what was actually available in the 1980s, and because the era’s whole look depended on soft, smoky lines with no hard cat-eye. When Julie’s liner turned out stiff and wouldn’t blend, Kirsten taught her the workaround artists use on set: load a brush from the pencil itself, go back over the line, then set and soften it further with the same dark eyeshadow already in the crease. The liner extended low along the entire under-eye, too — heavier than most people would choose today, which was the point.
The brows got the same “cheat, don’t cover” treatment: a pigmented concealer painted carefully around the edges to visually thin them without the full glue-and-paint job Kirsten uses for real character work, then filled in close to Julie’s natural color. And the blush went on the way it actually was in the reference — high, hard, and asymmetric on purpose, dragged from the cheekbone toward the mouth, mixed from two ordinary drugstore shades because that’s what Julie had on hand. “Pallets are such a scam,” Kirsten told her at one point, mid-mix. “You’re buying packaging, not products, most of the time” — advice from someone who could easily have upsold a $60 palette instead.
Skin stayed simple on purpose — a light base, cream contour instead of powder so it would hold up under a laptop ring light, and a deep berry lip that did most of the work of aging the whole look up. Mascara was heavy, almost old-Hollywood, and the last thing Kirsten had her do was mist a setting spray and let it dry before turning the camera off. “That’s the difference between a costume and a character,” Kirsten said. “The setting spray. Everybody skips it and wonders why their face doesn’t survive the party.”
From a Bathroom Mirror to Full Character
The whole thing happened over video, in real time, with Kirsten narrating brush angles from her own home the same way she would on a film set, and Julie following along at her own mirror three hundred and eighty miles north. No trip to LA, no salon chair — just the same technique Kirsten uses on shows people actually watch, applied to one person’s Halloween costume on a random Friday.
By the end, Julie wasn’t just wearing ‘80s-inspired makeup. She’d learned how a professional actually thinks about a face — as a shape to reinterpret, not a canvas to decorate. That’s a different kind of souvenir than a good costume photo, though she got one of those too.
Meet your stylist: Kirsten Coleman — Makeup Artist, Los Angeles, CA. Book with Kirsten: https://styldlifebookings.as.me/KirstenColeman
This story reflects a real, paid StyldLife client session. To protect our client’s privacy, the client is not pictured.