Duckie Thot
Beauty On The Rise
"We need to make you a color!" exclaimed legendary makeup artist Pat McGrath to a then very new-on-the-scene model named Duckie Thot just last year. According to Duckie, the two were both at a fitting for Kanye West's now-infamous SS17 Yeezy show and McGrath was testing foundations on all the models. After getting to Duckie, the makeup maestro paused and let the comment casually slip from her lips. "She said it like it was just light conversation," Thot recalls -- and it's evident from her voice that, despite a full year having gone by, she's still in a state of complete disbelief.
This whole episode is, of course, compounded by the fact that the September 2016 presentation was also Duckie's first official runway show. Though she's reluctant to cite any singular moment as the one when she knew she had made it (truthfully joking that "many girls can get a big booking and not work ever again after that job"), something about this interaction with Pat McGrath clearly left a lasting impression. And why not? It's not every day that one of the most recognizable names in the beauty industry tells you that your skin has inspired them to create a new cosmetics color.
Then again, Duckie's skin color is a large part of the reason her name has slowly (but, no doubt, surely) become a mainstay for the fashion set. It's a warm, mocha chocolate that's impossibly smooth and even-toned, and its dark hue is striking in a way that has made her simultaneously adored by casting agents looking for something radically different to the white industry norm and uplifted by the onlooking people of color observing -- and celebrating -- her increasingly rapid success. This latter community has even anointed her with the title of "Black Barbie."