Ugly Is Just a Lie We’ve Been Sold - Marco Roscino on Beauty, Rebellion, Breaking the Rules, and the Latest Collaboration with Solène Lescouët
There’s a certain kind of beauty that the industry worships. Clean, symmetrical, polished to oblivion. Marco Roscino isn’t interested. His makeup isn’t about following trends, but about twisting them, rejecting them, and sometimes, flat-out mocking them. Marco’s work lives in the tension between attraction and repulsion, playing with the raw, the imperfect, the ugly. If makeup is supposed to enhance, his enhances something deeper: personality, identity, contradiction.
Coming from a small town in the south of Italy where fashion barely existed, Roscino carved his own path: experimenting on himself, creating looks that weren’t meant to be beautiful, then pushing boundaries in Paris, where his vision of beauty clashes with the industry’s relentless obsession with commercial perfection. He refuses to airbrush reality, keeping skin textured, makeup unapologetically asymmetrical, and his references deeply rooted in art, philosophy, and punk.
In a moment where even rebellion is being repackaged as an aesthetic trend, Roscino remains uninterested in playing the game. He doesn’t care if his work makes you uncomfortable. If anything, he prefers it that way.
This season, he teamed up with designer Solène Lescouët for a collection “Crimson Lovers”, inspired by the romantic world of Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula (1992), bringing his raw, haunting aesthetic to the runway. The collaboration wasn’t about dictating a makeup look, but about merging visions. Solène handed Roscino full creative freedom, trusting his instinct to reflect the collection’s gothic, rebellious energy resulting in a series of unapologetic, eerie, and poetic looks that rejected standard beauty ideals in favor of something far more interesting.
In this interview with EDGELINE, the artist talks about his love for imperfection, the frustration with fashion’s recycling of the same references, and why the industry’s idea of rebellion is often just another marketable trend.
IT’S AN HONOUR TO FINALLY DO THIS INTERVIEW! I WOULD LOVE TO START BY JUST ASKING YOU A LITTLE BIT ABOUT YOUR JOURNEY IN MAKEUP. HOW DID YOU DISCOVER THAT THIS WAS YOUR PASSION, THAT IT WAS YOUR PATH?
I came from a really small city in the South of Italy where fashion is not really something that people understand, it’s something really far from them by culture. So, it was a little bit hard and I started to do makeup basically on myself. I was really passionate about the drag queen scene and I was kind of getting in touch with the more female part of myself. I started when I was really young, like 15, 16 and I started to do makeup on myself basically, but I was just doing really messy, ugly eyeliner, really long. I was stealing makeup from my mom. I practiced a lot on myself. This I think is the main thing of my personality. I test a lot on myself every day. I am still doing this and I think I’m going to keep doing that forever. I was really young and the first male makeup artist of my age doing makeup on people. And I was also having some friends working in theater, and I started to do that. So, mostly for this my makeup is really bold and really visible because I think I start with theater, so it was something that was supposed to be visible, also from far.
Then I got the opportunity to work with this team of huge buyers from the South of Italy and they were invited to the shows and events in Milan. I asked them to join the team as a makeup artist, just to see how fashion in Milan was. They were really happy to make me join them. We went together to Milan when I was 18. This is when I saw Fashion Week for the first time. I started young and I fell in love. I was like, okay, this is what I want to do. But I was also studying packaging design and graphic design. I moved to Milan to study. In the meantime, I was working as a makeup artist. It was really tough because the university was tough and I was really focused on makeup because I knew that it was what I wanted to do. I did my first internship in Paris three years ago for L'Oréal. I fell in love with Paris and I decided to move here after graduation because I knew for work it was way better than Milan. Also for my style, I'm more simulated here, people contact me more, they understand the concept better. Italian style is a little bit classic. They don't want to explore that much and I'm really provocative with my style. Also in Paris, I mean, it's not totally free to express yourself, but I still find the team that wants to explore something different.
IT'S EXACTLY WHAT I WAS ABOUT TO ASK YOU, WHAT THE HARDEST PART OF IT HAS BEEN, CONSIDERING SO MANY BRANDS ARE STILL PLAYING VERY SAFE IN THE INDUSTRY. YOU HAVE QUITE A PARTICULAR, UNIQUE, EXPRESSIVE STYLE, CELEBRATING THE “UGLINESS” AS PART OF SELF-EXPRESSION.
To tell you the truth, I feel like in our industry, there's kind of a mask, what we show to society. Like body positivity which was a big thing three years ago and now we don't see a lot of that. It’s just to be cool, to be on trend, to respect what the society wants, but at the end of the day, nobody cares. I feel like here, it's the same. If you really want to be bold, punk, I don't want to say only provocative because it's not about that. People do it just because it looks cool, not because they really care about that aesthetic and they want to respect that idea, that vision. So, for me, sometimes it's hard, but I manage to find people that are more understanding, that want to get in touch with a really intimate part of themselves and explore something different, because I'm really tired of standards, beauty trends, and this kind of bullshit. I really want to show people that we should do what we want. Of course, it's dangerous because there is marketing, we need to sell things, we need to eat, and to pay the rent at the end of the day. It’s unfortunate how society is built.
Everybody should do what they want. We have to be free because there are so many creatives in this industry. If everyone does what everyone else does and we are all the same, than what is the point?
I COULDN’T AGREE MORE. UNFORTUNATELY, I THINK WE'RE STILL IN THE INDUSTRY IN WHICH FOLLOWING THE STANDARDS IS WHAT IS MOST PROBABLY GOING TO PAY YOUR RENT.
When I see moodboards, they always put the same references. They take the campaigns from the 90s, I mean guys, okay, it was a cool era, but it was 30 years ago. Move on. We are in 2025, technology has improved and in fashion, we are still doing the same thing. We still see the same faces, same bodies. For this, I feel like fashion is in crisis because people now are more conscious that the idea of fashion is just a lie, you know?
DO YOU REMEMBER YOUR VERY FIRST MAKEUP LOOK AND HOW IT CAME TO LIFE? WERE YOU INSPIRED BY SOMETHING PARTICULAR OR WAS IT JUST LIKE YOU EXPERIMENTING AND TRYING OUT?
If I have to think about something really creative, I think I can talk mostly about my period during COVID when we were stuck in the house. During that period, I did lots of makeup looks, experimenting everyday. I was also studying art at school so I was drawing things with paper and glued them on my face to treat like characters. I did Marie Antoinette, and the wig was in paper. If I have to think about my first creative makeup, it would be this one. Before, it was more functional looks, such as for theaters, respecting the mood of the story and similar.
SPEAKING ABOUT YOUR COLLABORATION WITH SOLÈNE FOR THIS FASHION WEEK. WE WERE REALLY OBSESSED WITH THE MAKEUP LOOKS AND HOW THEY PERFECTLY FIT THE COLLECTION. TELL ME MORE ABOUT THIS COLLABORATION ITSELF AND YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH THE DESIGNER.
Me and Solène were following each other for a while. But we never talked about doing something together. So, I remember the time we said, okay, we should do something together. She was doing a shoe collaboration with a brand, I think from London. And she wanted me to do the makeup for the campaign. What I love about her style and aesthetic is that she is really punk, so I was really happy to do something together. When we talked about makeup looks, she showed me my work. She didn't send me the moodboard with other people’s work. She showed me this kind of eyeliner that I did and asked if I could do it for her. So, I drew new different eyeliner shapes and I sent them to her. I really respect that she showed my work as a reference. She was like “I really want you for your style” and this I really loved. After this campaign, she already told me about the upcoming presentation and that she would like to have me for the makeup. So during January and February, we discussed a lot about what we’re going to do, how many looks. I first asked her to tell me the story about the collection. It was inspired by Dracula from Coppola. It was all about vampires and the world of vampires. Very punk. When I have this kind of work, I usually have a reference in my mind already from movies, cinema, art. I bought a lot of new books that talk also about monsters and creatures. Some of my main references are books that talk about ugliness in terms of philosophy and aesthetics. First I started drawing the makeup looks to see what I want, I was also checking my books. This is also why we have different makeup looks, because there are lots of different personalities in the presentation, a lot of different looks. I didn’t want to do one makeup for everyone. I also wanted to tell a story but not to be the protagonist. The collection was already bold, so we tried to match and balance it, so that we are both happy. For that reason, I really loved the collaboration with Solène because it's really about respecting each other, sharing ideas.
IS THERE A PARTICULAR FAVORITE MAKEUP LOOK OF YOURS?*
My favorite one is really intimate with a part of myself, when I started doing makeup, it’s inspired by ugliness. It’s the one with the red lens on the right eye and the rest are really bold, punk eyes. One of my main inspirations was Marilyn Manson back the time. His look is really gorgeous.
I CAN DEFINITELY SEE IT.
Even when I started doing makeup on myself back in the time when I moved to Milan, I never did a symmetric makeup look. I was doing one eye, for example, yellow and purple, and the other eye completely blue. I never did my face symmetrically.
WAS THIS ABOUT EXPRESSING DIFFERENT PARTS OF YOURSELF?
Yeah I think. I feel like in everyone, there's a conflict between two sides of ourselves. I think I was showing this battle inside myself through it. I'm not looking for perfection or symmetry in things of course, because it's part ugliness. I was also really interested to see people’s reaction to this. Why do we do the eyes symmetrically? Who said that? Why do we have to do the eyeliner perfectly? I mean, I'm not criticizing that, because it's also part of an aesthetic which is different. It’s about the “rules” that are set. We should all do what we want without following any rules. When you see beauty trends from magazines, you're never going to see something like that because it will never be a trend in society.
SPEAKING ABOUT TRENDS AND STANDARDS, ANOTHER FACT SPECIFIC TO YOU IS THAT YOU DON’T LIKE TO COVER UP TOO MUCH OF THE SKIN. USUALLY, IT’S THE PERFECT, PORCELAIN SKIN THAT THE INDUSTRY AIMS FOR, BUT YOU ACTUALLY CELEBRATE ALL THE IMPERFECTIONS.
Exactly. It’s skin! When we do campaigns, the first thing to do is remove imperfections. I mean, if you see the skin of most of the population, it’s not perfect like that. Some people, for example, don't have the time or money because, to be honest, skincare and makeup is really expensive. We have to think about that like otherwise we are talking to an elite. This is what fashion is doing and me. When I also talk about ugliness, it's always related to society because if you talk about this in our creative bubble, everyone is kind of understanding, you know. But if you go outside with the green lipstick, people are going to think that you are mad.
For me eyes are always the main thing of the look. Except for the main look which was inspired by Dracula. We did pale skin, white lashes, really vampire-like with this bordeaux, red lips.
She told me the look was really huge and white and we wanted to just add the touch of color popping with the pale skin. When I think about the look, I didn’t only take inspiration from photography, Dracula, but also the performance from Gina Pane, back in the time. She was bending down with her hands, in front of people. She cuts herself and she puts the spine of the roses inside. And there was this contrast with a little bit of blood as she was dressed completely in white.
IT IS AN AMAZING REFLECTION OF THE BRAND AND THIS COLLECTION! WHAT WAS THE MOST FUN PART OF WORKING ON THIS PRESENTATION AND SOLÈNE?
I went to her studio with my drawings and an empty piece of paper, to create a look maybe on spot with her. She really loved every look. Even if she was the designer, she gave me the full freedom and trust on this. She called me because she respected me as a professional but also as a creative. This is why I really had a lot of fun.
It was a safe space for everyone there. Also, for the presentation, we were not having models, they were more performers or like singers. Some of them were maybe not used to their face with a lot of makeup and I wanted to respect their personalities as well. Sometimes makeup artists forget that they are people with personality and identity. Of course they were there to bring the vision alive, but we also have to respect each other. For me, this is really important and at the end of the day, everybody was happy and in a safe space.
IT’S STILL VERY SCARCE NOWADAYS RECEIVING THAT KIND OF FREEDOM AND HAVING THIS SAFE SPACE WAS WHAT BROUGHT SUCH AMAZING RESULTS. CONGRATULATIONS AGAIN ON THIS FRUITFUL COLLABORATION. I WANTED TO ASK YOU ONE LAST QUESTION. IS THERE AN ULTIMATE ARTIST INSPIRATION FOR YOU?
For makeup, of course, my idol and my queen is Inge Grognard. During all the glam in the 90s and before, she was the one being punk which is why she’s one of my main inspirations. She was a makeup artist but also a muse for artists like Margiela.
HE’S AN ABSOLUTE ICON I AGREE.
My main inspirations are art and cinema. If I have to think about a movement for example, I would say it’s the body art from the 60s and 70s. The body artists of that time were using the body as canvas to tell a story or send a message. And this is what we are missing today I think, because of course, because if it’s on the surface, it’s not art. Art is all about sending that message. It's politics, it's social, it's culture.
IT’S ALSO ABOUT PROVOKING EMOTIONS, RIGHT?
Exactly. Emotions, they can be good or bad. I'm young and so I'm still experimenting. But it's my goal, I don't want to do things that are on the surface level. There's always a message behind and emotion to provoke.
OFTEN ARTISTS TEND TO PLAY SAFE AND ARE LIMITED WITH OTHERS’ VISION. THIS IS THE EXACT REASON WHY WE WANTED TO SPEAK WITH YOU, AS YOU ARE GOING AGAINST ALL OF IT, NOT AFRAID TO TELL YOUR STORY, EXPRESS YOUR VALUES. WE’RE THANKFUL FOR THIS INTERVIEW!
Thanks to you, I am really happy to talk to you. I really want everybody to express their vision, have fun, not to be scared to do so because of the norms that are imposed. Otherwise, where's the point guys?
Words: Sara Vukosavljevi