Pablo Manzoni, one of fashion’s first superstar makeup artists, died in February in New York. He was 82.
Né Paolo Zappi-Manzoni, he was the son of an aristocratic surgeon. In or around 1960 he landed a job at Elizabeth Arden in Rome based on connections rather than experience. But his natural talent for painting faces was soon revealed. Manzoni became the go-to guy for local BPs (beautiful people) and glitterati (he is responsible for bleaching Sophia Loren’s eyebrows), but as Vogue would later note, he was most “celebrated for the looks he created for the Italian couture houses, beauty complementing fashion in a way never seen before.” Working with fashion designers allowed Manzoni to push his aesthetic in more fantastical directions—especially when it came to the eyes—and it also mirrored what was starting to happen in the industry at large as the world continued to open up in the postwar period, and the polished lady gave way to the Youthquake and a new individualistic bohemianism.
That free-spiritedness was still in the future when Manzoni relocated to New York in 1964 at the behest of Elizabeth Arden herself. “Those were the days of Jackie Kennedy, and all the models were molded to look like her. It was fashionable to look like somebody famous, because it was a way to be noticed,” the makeup artist would later recall. The fashionable world certainly paid heed when Manzoni arrived: “The great Pablo is now here,” Vogue announced in the May issue, which featured his handiwork on the cover.
