We would all be lying to yourselves if there wasn’t a time where we wondered how we could get Taylor Swift’s statement red lip, Carly Rae Jepson’s iconic fringe, Ariana Grande’s sky high ponytail, or Lana Del Ray’s killer liquid liner. These are just a few examples of how our favorite musicians are often also our biggest inspiration for hair, makeup and fashion.
While some celebrities may have a hand in picking out how they want to look, they often have the help and expertise of our beauty professionals behind the scenes executing the look. Hair stylists, makeup artists and stylists are making sure our music icons are concert ready, photoshoot prepped and glammed up to take on their next project. This is where the beauty industry and music industry meet.
Aga Tompkins is one of these many professionals who have given their time and energy to a celebrity for that final look. Aga toured the world with Carly Rae Jepson for nearly a decade working to perfect her looks show after show with all the interviews and photo shoots in between. Wondering what it is like to be a tour hairstylist/makeup artist? We got you covered.
Aga joined Volume Up by The Tease to talk about her experience as a tour stylist, how she got there, and her decision to leave the tour. Aga didn’t just touch on tour though she covered her unconventional way of entering the industry, how she made networking work for her, hiring for a salon, and her now incredible work with amika as a Territory Brand Manager. We could have talked with Aga for hours.
Head to wherever you stream to tune into this jam packed episode and we take it all the way back to the myspace scene kid days.
“I would look out and see which bands are coming to town. Even like people I hired I would be like, ‘what bands do you want to do hair for? If there’s a show that you think we should do hair-’. And I would creep on the internet and just try to find like ‘how do I find somebody that knows somebody that might know somebody that connects to the band’ and I would email them. Eventually I grew my network. So it was all through networking.”
“It’s the music industry so it’s obviously a different industry in general. The biggest part of being a tour hairstylist is travel. I mean we just travel, travel, travel. I’ve done hair on every continent aside from Antarctica.”
“I’ve never worked for a brand in that whole time. I was always independent. I never felt like I could marry someone like in a brand and I was like, ‘no, I’m putting a ring on it. amika girl come on’.”
Listen to the full episode here or wherever you stream and head over to our Instagrams @Readthetease and @volumeupbythetease.
