Polaroids and pigments: Make-up artist Bari Khalique on leaving a mark on pop culture

"Oh yeah, that was a really fun job in London before I went to Fashion Week,” laughs Bari Khalique. I catch the London-based make-up artist in between holidaying with his recently adopted cat, Gonzo, in his hometown Glasgow. He has just entered a bar and apologetically asks them to soften the classical music, as we pore over his collection of over 400 Polaroids taken across the years. At first, he talks about Willow Smith. “She’s a very cool girl,” he says. “I was doing her make-up, and I showed Willow one of the products—a liquid eyeshadow which was pure glitter. She asked, ‘What’s that?’, and I said, ‘I haven’t used it, should we try it?” After the call with Khalique, I watched Willow perform for Acne Studios, the corner of her eyes shining golden in the dimly lit Hackney Church.

It’s Troye Sivan in another Polaroid, before the Loewe menswear show a couple of years ago, his lips stained with gloss. “Troye’s very open and chill,” says Khalique. “He was the first person to share my Polaroids, which encouraged me to take many more.” It has become a part of his practice—photographing his handiwork—there are albums of it now, he shows me in between cooking Moroccan for two of his friends. When he left home at 21, going the celebrity route was nowhere in his imagination, Khalique confesses. “I’m just in awe of it now,” he smiles. It was very boy-meets-world, the supposed romantic rite of passage where a young queer person moves to the city—London, in this case—drawn by the ‘newness’ of it, as “Glasgow had become too small.” However, it was five years at the hairdresser’s as a receptionist, armed with two years of studying advertising and PR, before he could firmly decide to leave his day job.

He’s quite an instinctive artist, and I figured that considering how often he’d use the word to describe a look. That’s also how he started make-up at 15, watching his best friend put on eyeliner before a rave, and feeling, maybe he could do it better. “So, I started doing it on her, and then it became a ritual over the weekend. I would go over to her house and glam her up like one of my favourite pop stars when we went clubbing,” he laughs. It has continued till today, when he wants to find things for himself. “No matter how much make-up I’m sent over, I still want to go make-up shopping,” he says. “If I’m in Paris, I’ll go to Sephora and play with textures.” Although spontaneous, an immense amount of his time goes into researching, clear through the '90s skinny eyebrows being his favourite fashion moment. “I remember going to a shoot and I had this discontinued vintage French magazine called Zoom,” he says. “I found every single issue—I took it out, and everyone was reading it on set.” It also helps living in an area like New Cross that hasn’t been affected by gentrification, with its vibrant music and bar scene drawing in the queer crowd. “There are a lot of girls who go to these music venues with make-up, and watching them I feel like, wow,” he exclaims.

Growing up as a first-generation immigrant kid to Bangladeshi parents, surrounded by seven brothers and three sisters, he spent a copious amount of time watching retro Bollywood movies as a child when no one was home. “I was watching Ram Shastra (1995) and Anjam (1994),” he laughs. “That was my favourite pastime—I would take in all the colours and just be fascinated with the women.” It was a Bollywood moment for him when he was flown in to Mumbai for Ananya Panday’s Swarovski campaign. “My child self was screaming with joy,” he smiles. “Ananya was so excited to meet the UK team that was coming in for her hair and make-up. We started off with cleaner looks, brown tones on the lips, and we moved on to an eye look where she has two fingers around it. That sharp eyeliner was more of an inspiration from Indian movies! Ananya was also playing these classic retro Bollywood songs from her own playlist.”

It was a similar feeling he had watching Avanti Nagrath walking the Versace runway. “I felt an inner sense of pride,” he shares. “I felt I would love to work with her one day, and then I got to do the Bazaar India (Jan-Feb 2025) cover.” The regal smoky eye and cherry cola lip was a look he had created on the set of the palace they were shooting in Vienna, with Nagrath. Khalique recalls her being on-board with his ideas right from the beginning. “All the girls I work with have an input in the look. I’ve never done a job where it’s not been collaborative.” Perhaps it hits closer to home, as along with being one of the few South Asians in the make-up industry, success didn’t come overnight. It was making connections and getting small breaks, like the stylist Kamran Rajput following him on Instagram, to bigger breaks like contacting him as backup for two cover shoots as someone had fallen sick. At the same time, he was doing campaigns for JW Anderson. “That led me to sign to The Wall Group after eight years of freelancing,” he shares. “They were the first agency that took a chance on me and let me do my thing.”

It was right after that he drew a red lip on Emily Ratajkowski for Jacquemus and blew up the internet. “It was one of the moments when you just create magic. Within half an hour of Emily stepping out, it was just written about everywhere.” Fashion Weeks have become an intense schedule, and this season he worked with a slew of celebrities like Jeremy O Harris for Dior Men, Fai Khadra for Balenciaga, Riley Keough for Chanel. “In fashion week, you have to really be alive in the moment and be brave to try out looks,” he shares. Tish Weinstock is one of his long-standing friends, and he recalls getting inspired by the taxi ride to her hotel for the Gucci show. “She really trusts me with her face,” he tells Bazaar India. “Every time I’m there, I’ll show her something new, as she’s a beauty editor—she’s probably seen everything! We chat, she’ll show me the dress that she’ll be wearing, and tell me how she wants to feel. This time she wanted a smoky eye—it became a smouldering version of that.”

It’s a similar camaraderie he shares with Maisie Williams—perhaps it’s the infectious excitement he brings to every job, which catches on. “She’s very down-to-earth,” he smiles. “I was looking at old Hollywood actresses at the time we did the Harper’s Bazaar UK cover for ‘The New Look’, and I tried to do a modern take. The emphasis was on the eyes and the overdrawn mouth. She had the pixie cut to make it more modern, too.” Channelling classic glamour continued to the Dior show that year when Maisie had finger waves, or the show premier look where he crystallised her eyes with Swarovski. “This is a very nice relationship,” he laughs. Beyond making people look the best version of themselves, he thrives in the experimental side of photoshoots, like stacking up six eyelashes sitting in a trailer, for a Chanel story for one publication, or creating a lip from an old Chanel gold eyeshadow palette for another. “I’m hoping to do much more stuff like that,” he says. “It feels like you’ve created something.”

All images: Courtesy of Bari Khalique

This article first appeared in the print edition of Harper's Bazaar India, April-May 2025. 

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