Opinion | Can we ever repay her? Rose Barondess made everyone look better.

Comment on this storyCommentIf you’ve ever been on TV — and in Washington, that’s everyone — you then’ve been to “make-up.” If you’ve been very fortunate, you’ve landed within the chair of an artist named Rose Procopio Barondess.Rose, as she’s identified to all, has been reinventing the faces of the well-known and notorious for greater than 40 years. From Mikhail Gorbachev to Betty White and presidents Bill Clinton to Donald Trump, Rose has painted all of them and was usually among the many most requested make-up artists as a result of, outdated fingers knew, she’d remodel them from each angle.Mind you, there are lots of great, gifted make-up artists within the TV information racket. But Rose is particular. Ask Clinton, who signed one of many capes she used to guard shoppers’ clothes: “Rose — the most effective present this aspect of cosmetic surgery.” Henry Kissinger wrote: “You did the most effective you could possibly.” Former White House press secretary Dee Dee Myers genuflected: “I bow at your toes.”Her cape with these and different notable signatories, in addition to Rose’s totally geared up make-up bag, will turn out to be a part of historical past Monday when Rose fingers them over to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History. The museum requested that Rose go away her massive toolbox intact, together with all her many dabs, paints, powders, brushes and different provides. “I by no means would have imagined,” Rose instructed me, “that my make-up would turn out to be a historic artifact.” It was Tim Russert’s concept years in the past that she donate them.She isn’t retiring fully — she nonetheless has “particular” shoppers, each non-public and within the anchor chair. But the pandemic, throughout which she misplaced her father, put her work life in perspective. Now appeared the appropriate time to half together with her skilled keepsakes.Rose, born in D.C., acquired into the enterprise early on, making up herself and her sisters. She started modeling at 19 however most popular being behind the scenes to being in entrance of a digicam. “I had extra management with make-up,” she recalled, “and I used to be higher at it than I used to be at modeling.”Working principally with community and cable TV — making up Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, Katie Couric, Russert and Chris Matthews, to call just a few — she additionally has traveled the globe with the expertise. During the 1996 presidential race between Bill Clinton and Bob Dole, she labored with each campaigns and made up each candidates.I’ve identified Rose since I first appeared as a visitor on a Sunday present about 15 years in the past. In a matter of minutes, she might flip my barely moisturized face into one thing individuals is likely to be prepared to tolerate of their dwelling rooms for a couple of minutes.For the uninitiated, make-up is crucial on digicam not a lot to make you look higher — although that’s a bonus — however to make you look alive. Even earlier than the curse of high-definition TV, studio lighting is so extreme that even the most effective human faces are rendered flat and lifeless with out strategic outlining and highlighting.Let’s be trustworthy; that is hazardous work. You’d need to, actually, get within the face of excessive upkeep celebrities and personalities, many instances an hour, day after day. It can also be surprisingly intimate work, and that doesn’t make it simpler. While working, Rose was laser-focused on each pore of your face — which takes some getting used to — and saved her ideas strictly to herself. But then, I doubt that Michelangelo was chatty whereas turning a typical ceiling into the Sistine Chapel.And the individuals she’s portray? They don’t essentially exude empathy. Rose tells of creating up the “breathtakingly good-looking” John F. Kennedy Jr. for Russert’s “Meet the Press,” and being instructed by the present’s producers to not converse to him, to not look at him, to not make eye contact, to not {photograph} him or ask for an autograph. Rose didn’t say a peep till Kennedy requested her about her cape and requested if he might signal it, too. She turned to Russert and requested if he might autograph it. “Of course, he can!” Russert shouted. Rose recalled of Kennedy: “He was the nicest particular person on the planet.”Others have been usually in any other case — both jumpy and nervous or demanding and condescending. The finest make-up masters attempt to put everyone comfortable, no matter agenda. Rose was a grasp at that. “I acknowledged that I’m the final particular person individuals see earlier than they go on set, and I attempt to preserve that in my thoughts. Being calm helps them turn out to be calmer.”Makeup artists are additionally wonderful listeners. The make-up room is the place individuals let down their hair, actually, in addition to figuratively, and say issues they’d by no means say elsewhere. Pre-show jitters seemingly improve this impact. Even a few of the most-seasoned veterans nonetheless get the shakes earlier than the curtain goes up. Live TV presents myriad alternatives to say one thing silly, which, you will be positive, shall be remembered and replayed by the Schadenfreude crowd.The working assumption is that what you say in make-up stays in make-up — and common company usually confuse the artists for his or her therapists. That has me wanting ahead to her dishy memoir, already within the works with the working title, “All Made Up.”Relax, Washington. Most individuals who’ve sat in Rose’s chair have little to fret about. Mostly, we must be grateful, as few of us will ever look nearly as good as we did when she whipped off her cape from round our necks and mentioned, “Okay, you’re prepared.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/26/rose-barondess-makeup-artist-retires/