Saturday, January 21, 2012

Kriss Soterion-Blevens, makeup guru of N.H. primary, on the lasting appeal of ‘Debate’ lipstick


Kriss Soterion-Blevens, with GOP hopeful Jon Huntsman in her makeup chair. (Mark Blevens)

If your favorite GOP hopefuls are looking a little more haggard, it’s not just the toll of the trail: They’ve been forced to move on from New Hampshire and away from the facial artistry of Kriss Soterion-Blevens.

Manchester’s go-to makeup artist caused a sensation in the last cycle when her work on Hillary Clinton for a June 2007 debate had viewers speculating about a facelift or Botox. Just some magic face-brightening, says Soterion-Blevens, who balked at the traditional red lipstick a campaign aide offered. “I got this feeling of, not feeling it.”

She spontaneously mixed three shades she had on hand — a red, a plum and a bronze. Soon, customers were calling to demand “the Hillary lipstick.”


Clinton in 2007, wearing the now-famous “Debate” lipstick. (Charles Krupa/AP) She packaged the new shade with a non-partisan name — and four years later, “Debate” lipstick remains a bestseller for her Kriss Cosmetics. “Candy Crowley was sporting it on CNN,” she told us.

This time around, Soterion-Blevens and her team were hired to paint faces (yes, male and female alike benefit from her light-reflecting, age-minimizing powders) for Fox, MSNBC, NBC, PBS and CNN, she told us. She says she taught Michele Bachmann a thing or two and is sorry the congresswoman was out of the race by last week’s debate. (“I had the false eyelashes all ready to go.”)

“So many people say, ‘It’s too bad you’re not traveling around with Hillary Clinton now,’ ” she said. Hey, ever work on Callista Gingrich? Nope: Newt’s wife does her own work, and “she is meticulous. . . She would say, ‘Kris, do I need anything?’ I would say, ‘No, you look fabulous.’ ”

Read earlier: Michele Bachmann raised fashion bar for female politicians, 1/5/12

Callista Gingrich, a stand-out at Basilica of the National Shrine choir, 12/15/11


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