Rose-Marie Swift
The makeup artist behind RMS Beauty knows lit-from-within glow.
Written by LAURA REGENSDORF
Silver-haired with a trademark red lip, Rose-Marie Swift didn’t set out to become the de facto face of her brand, RMS Beauty. “I’m a behind-the-camera girl,” says the makeup artist, who made her name working on Vogue editorials and Victoria’s Secret campaigns before launching cosmetics in 2009. It just so happens that the 70-year-old’s luminous skin and no-pretenses patter make her a compelling subject in the social-media era. If she knows her angles, there’s a reason for that: “I’m just copying what Giselle did,” Swift says with a laugh.”
Long before clean beauty was an industry catchphrase, Swift was shaping RMS with a philosophy of inside-out wellness. Early products, like the easy-to-blend multitasker Lip2Cheek, featured nourishing oils in lieu of synthetic binders. On set, Swift became known as much for her sheer, naturalistic makeup as for her homemade green juices and astrology readings. “I never really became the Pat McGrath or Diane Kendal or Lucia Pieroni,” Swift says of her celebrated peers. Instead, she parlayed her know-how into an insider-favorite brand. Swift has never been one to follow a conventional route, having gotten her start in Vancouver doing dancers’ makeup at local strip clubs. She operates with intuition and hands-on finesse, using her fingertips to melt pigment into the checks or to tap on Living Luminizer—one of the staples found here in her expertly edited BAG. Back in 2009 when she launched that product, the world wasn’t ready for highlighter. “People would say, ‘Who wants a glow on your cheekbone?’ Nobody got that,” she says. Now, they certainly do.
