The Wizard Behind the Curtain: Eric Sakas on Kevyn Aucoin’s Magic, Mystique and the Novel Inspired by Him

“He always talked about the wizard behind the curtain: You have to hold a little back and still keep a little bit of that magic.” That’s how Eric Sakas remembers Kevyn Aucoin, the legendary makeup artist he shared a life and career with for nearly ten years. Now, Sakas is letting some of that magic out, with Saving Face ($17), a debut novel drawn from the world they lived in.

Sakas has been carrying this story for more than 20 years. “When Kevyn passed away in 2002, a few years after, I really reflected on my time that I spent with him,” he says. “I wanted to tell a story about behind the scenes with my experience in the beauty and fashion world, but I wanted to tell it in a way that had glimpses of the truth but was not really the truth.”

He first tried it for television. Around 2006 or 2007, a devoted Sex and the City fan, he pitched the concept of a working makeup artist in New York to creator Darren Star, who, Sakas says, loved the idea. After he wrote a pilot, though, it didn’t move forward. But the characters never left him. “I’ve had these characters in my mind for the past 20 years,” he says. “They’re really an amalgamation of people that were in my life, people that I’ve worked with, people that I’ve known.”

Now they’re in Saving Face, released September 28 and available on Amazon. The novel follows Derrick Sands, a small-town Texan who moves to New York with his best friend, Scottie, and a pair of battered makeup kits. Derrick carries a photo of Aucoin in his wallet. He’s drawn into the orbit of Lena Zembericos, a singer, actress and fashion icon on the verge of a comeback, and the life he dreamed of begins to feel within reach. But being needed starts to feel like being loved.

“I wrote Saving Face as a love letter to Kevyn and to all the makeup artists who devote their lives to their artistry,” Sakas says. “I wanted to celebrate the people behind the famous faces, whose own stories are rarely told.” The pull of that hidden world is part of what he loves. “I’ve always loved the behind the scenes more so than the performance itself. There’s just a seductiveness to that whole world.”

Fiction lets him share Aucoin’s story without quite telling it. “This was a way to tell their story without telling Kevyn’s story, but telling Kevyn’s story,” he says. He has written the real one, but isn’t ready to share it. “Being that close to Kevyn and his story still has a lot of love and pain, and I’m working through those issues…even this long after he’s gone from this world.”

Ask him what the famed MUA would have made of social media, and he doesn’t hesitate. “He’d be an empire! He’d be the next Condé Nast, really,” Sakas says. “He would tell the story and his world from a real point of view that was truthful and honest, and take the viewer behind the scenes.” Never entirely, though, as he stresses a few times over our chat that Aucoin always held “a little back.”

Sakas holds a deep archive of Aucoin’s photos and videos, and for the past six months he’s been posting pieces of it to @ericsakas, including footage with Whitney Houston, Tina Turner, Cher and Gwyneth Paltrow. “I can never get enough of it,” he says. And neither can those who view it: “People reach out and say, ‘Thank you for sharing this. Thank you for keeping his legacy alive.’ Some were part of that world, and some say, ‘I wasn’t a part of that world, but he really inspired me.’”

A younger generation is finding Aucoin, too, he says, “through his books and through other artists that post.” He points to Mario Dedivanovic (Makeup By Mario), as one who credits Aucoin as the source of the contouring technique he learned. “It’s really hard, but it’s also at the heart for me,” Sakas says. “It always makes me smile, and I just think, ‘Wow, Kevyn is still out there inspiring people.’”

The business of makeup artistry has changed, too. “When Kevyn was around, he was commanding a rate of $5,000 a day,” Sakas recalls. “I’d find it hard to find an artist in this industry who commands that kind of day rate today.” He attributes much of it to social media. “It’s much more democratic in terms of giving younger artists a chance to get a career in makeup artistry,” he says, though there are “so many artists that are really, really good today, so few celebrities to go around.” Some artists, he adds, hear from publicists asking them to lower their rates, even though the celebrity’s own rate hasn’t changed. Still, he sees the upside. “A lot of them have created their own businesses, which is also very encouraging.”

What does he hope readers take from the book? “The message of being true to yourself is something Kevyn always talked about, and certainly I’ve learned from him,” Sakas says. “A lot of times people look for fulfillment outside themselves, but then eventually come back to [themselves] to get that fulfillment.” The friendship between Derrick and Scottie is the book’s chosen-family thread and one Sakas hopes sticks with the reader. “It’s a beautiful story about friendship and about being true to yourself and finding yourself.”

Sakas is already at work on a second book that takes Derrick to Los Angeles, with a third likely returning him to New York. “It’s really his journey as an artist,” he says. He hopes to turn it into “some type of series or streaming, something to bring the characters to life.” He also wants to give Aucoin’s work a physical home. “I have an archive of his materials that I’d love to, someday, find a place to show his work and honor his legacy in a bigger way.” Until then, he's letting a little more magic out—and holding a little back—exactly the way the wizard would have wanted.

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