David Lynch's ladies (and their makeup)

RIP to a champion of blue eyeshadow

Thank you to everyone who has messaged me recently about my family’s safety during the fires. My parents’ house (where I’d been temporarily living since my move back to California) was in a vulnerable spot, so I’d barely eaten, slept, or done anything remotely human until a few days ago. I literally had a packed car, driving from place to place with my cats in tow, for a week straight. While we’re not completely and totally out of the woods yet, I’m no longer constantly on the move, so I’m using this as an opportunity to write, positively distract, and try to bring some normalcy back into my life.

So just to recap since we last spoke: California faced its biggest natural disaster, we’re all bracing for Trump’s inauguration, and now David Lynch is dead? I hate 2025, I hate 2025, I hate 2025.

*Sighs* Trying to articulate the impact of David Lynch feels almost impossible, even laughable. A certified visionary, soul-crushingly good storyteller, and a true eccentric freak. He was also one of the great champions of Los Angeles—he used every opportunity to talk about how much he loved the city’s golden light, the smell of jasmine, and the bliss of driving around in the twinkling lights at sunset. He loved Los Angeles as much as us locals, and it’s pretty painful to think about how he watched it burn during his last few days on earth.

But let’s talk about David Lynch’s leading ladies. I believe every woman experiences a moment of enlightenment as our frontal cortex develops—revisiting the books, TV shows, and movies we obsessed over as teenagers, only to realize that the female characters were all written by men, and are poorly conceived, painfully cringeworthy, and sometimes actually just fucked up. Me and my friends were obsessed with David Lynch in college, but revisiting them in later years has actually been pretty interesting and sometimes even surprisingly empowering. Don’t get me wrong: his female characters are often intense, obsessive, unstable, and deal with a lot of horrific violence, but there’s undeniable complexity and depth to them.

I first watched Twin Peaks when I was 18 and immediately did that embarrassing (but kinda tender!) teenage girl thing where it became my entire personality. I asked for saddle shoes for Christmas, hammed up my cigarette smoking, and splurged on my first-ever tube of MAC Ruby Woo lipstick. But when I rewatched Mulholland Drive the other day, I felt that same teen obsessiveness creeping back in: “Should I get a blonde bob again?” and “Fuck, I need to start wearing brown lip liner with red lipstick.” David Lynch’s women are undeniably compelling, striking, and sink deep into your psyche. I mean, is it a coincidence I wrote three papers on Blue Velvet for a film studies class and later developed an obsession with blue eyeshadow? I dunno!

Lynch’s female leads are some of the all-time greats, and even though the imagery in his work is iconic enough to be endlessly discussed (and not to mention literally replicated every Halloween), the makeup artists who helped define it—like Carla Fabrizi’s makeup in Twin Peaks, Jennifer Aspinall’s in Mullholland Drive, or Jeff Goodwin’s unforgettable electric blue eyeshadow for Blue Velvet—don’t get nearly enough credit, and that just doesn’t sit right with my spirit. Which is why I’m going to showcase some of my favorite makeup looks of theirs on Lynch ladies, and share how I’d recreate them at home.