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Fanci­for­ia Fox­glove may be adorned with diamantes, feath­ers and lashes, but she still doesn’t throw her cre­at­or, Bailey McCor­mack, into the shade.

Bailey and her alter ego have been cut­ting a swathe through the Wel­ling­ton burlesque/pinup/vintage scene for five years, and she will be one of 10 final­ists in Miss Pinup New Zea­l­and at The Very Vin­tage Day Out in Auck­land this month.

With a back­ground in theatre, it’s no sur­prise Bailey has ended up on the stage. Early on, she was cast as a bur­lesque char­ac­ter, so she took les­sons for research pur­poses and ended up being booked for sev­er­al bur­lesque per­form­ances. Her interest grew and Fanci­for­ia Fox­glove came to life.

Bailey uses her theatre skills on stage, but admits the aes­thet­ic is a huge part of bur­lesque performance.

There’s a lot that goes into get­ting ready for a show, but it’s not a chore for me,” she says. “There’s set­ting your hair the night before, and the level of make-up is almost at cir­cus clown — false lashes, con­tour­ing, some­times block­ing out your eye­brows and draw­ing them on high­er, glit­ter lips, pasties…

You take the audi­ence to a fantasy land where more is more, and everything is extravagant.”

She main­tains a strong ele­ment of vin­tage/pin-up in her look, even at her Wel­ling­ton City Coun­cil day job.

Bailey’s daily beauty routine incor­por­ates some drama from the stage, but in a more relaxed way. She con­tours, but just a little; she wears eye­shad­ow, but a nat­ur­al shade; she wears mas­cara on her top lashes, but keeps it simple under her eyes. Although she strives to wear less found­a­tion dur­ing the day, swap­ping to a BB cream or min­er­al powder to com­pensate for wear­ing heavy stage make-up, she insists on three essen­tial products for her day-to-day pin-up look: red lip­stick, liquid eye­liner and some­thing to cre­ate strong brows.

A make-up enthu­si­ast, her cur­rent favour­ites include Aus­tral­is Velourlips, a cream that dries matte, and the bold lip shades from Lime Crime. “Matte is really good — unless you’re on stage and need to throw glit­ter on top!”

Anoth­er favour­ite is Bésame, a brand that cre­ates repro­duc­tions of clas­sic make-up from the 1920s to the 1950s — she owns a Bésame lip­stick called Red Hot Red, based on Mar­ilyn Monroe’s favour­ite shade.

Bailey uses an ori­gin­al pin-curl meth­od for her bleached blonde ‘Mar­ilyn’ hair, avoid­ing hot rollers if pos­sible. She has per­fec­ted vin­tage looks, mas­ter­ing pin curls, vic­tory rolls and the tricky styles in between. In keep­ing with her authen­t­ic streak, Bailey skips bronzers and tan­ning to play up her nat­ur­ally pale skin.

Des­pite the mass of make-up Bailey applies for her shows, she doesn’t use a ser­i­ously heavy-duty for­mula to remove it. Her atti­tude is that less is more. Using oil to remove oil, she chooses an Anti­podes cream cleanser or simple rose­hip oil. “Because I have so much grease on my face all time, I like to keep my skin­care super-nat­ur­al,” she says.

Even Fanci­for­ia Fox­glove needs some down time.

Eliza Romanos

A confirmed Wellingtonian, Eliza comes from a family of journalists and has recently completed a BA at Victoria University in Art History and Media. Now making her own way in the world of journalism, she has particular interests in fashion and art. She misses the DTL in lower Cuba Street and the dance floor being at the other end of Good Luck Bar. Eliza lives in a bitterly cold flat in Brooklyn but appreciates the walk into town through Central Park every morning.