Miss Passionfruit gets creative with makeup
Self-taught makeup artist Vunene Mabasa, aka Miss Passionfruit, has made a name for herself by creating makeup fictional characters.
Mabasa, who grew up in Elim, says her work takes her all over the Mopani district where she works on productions at events. As a child, she wanted to do something that would get her noticed. “I wanted to be different,” she says. “In preschool, I aspired to play table tennis and wanted to attend a specific school because they offered table tennis.”
As a makeup artist, she also went against the stream. “I wanted to do more than ordinary makeup,” she says. She came across artists who were painting faces online and it ignited ideas of how she could follow suit. “I started by replicating their looks and eventually channelled it into doing my own creative looks.” It takes around eight hours to create a fictional character, depending on the detail.
Also read: Vunene gets creative with makeup
Recently she has worked for brands such as Bash and Legit in the Foschini Group. She also won an ambassadorship programme for Kryolan, an international makeup brand. Last year she won an Elim community award for best makeup artist and was interviewed by Newsroom Afrika.
She was also recently also used in the Dove Daisy brand campaign. “Recognition of my work as a makeup artist is growing and, remarkably, I have been able to achieve this as a girl from the villages.”
