NYWIFT Blog

Countdown to Designing Women 2013! Only three days until the big event, but you can still buy tickets.

I was lucky enough to chat with the honorees for Designing Women 2013, to be held on Thursday, May 23, at The McGraw Hill Building in NYC. Here’s what I learned:

Makeup artist Andrea Miller moved from Jamaica to NYC when she was seven. Evidence that Miller she picked the right career is apparent in the praise she got from Former President Bill Clinton, whom she’d made up for an interview on the NBC Nightly News. “She’s a surgeon,” Clinton told Tom Brokaw during a commercial break; Brokaw agreed. As Andrea relates, still with amazement, “they spent four minutes talking about me!”

She moved to film when, after making what she says was a “proper nuisance” of herself, she was hired as an intern on a Spike Lee movie.

Miller will receive her Designing Women award from Julianna Margulies, whose makeup she’s been doing for the entire run of CBS’s The Good Wife.

Hair stylist Mandy Lyons’ talent was evident early — her first show was in Paris, with Karl Lagerfeld. She made the move to film when Sarah Jessica Parker was looking for a hair stylist and stayed with her through two seasons of Sex and the City and the subsequent movies.

She has worked on many other famous heads, including Tilda Swinton, Jennifer Lopez, and Norah Jones, who will be presenting her with the Designing Women award. Actors, says Lyons, “are most interested in finding the best person for what they want to look like as a character.” She obviously fits that bill.

Costumer designer Deborah Scott won an Academy Award for her work on Titanic, an experience she says was surreal. But for her, it wasn’t just about winning the Oscar. Her continuing satisfaction comes from being part of a movie beloved worldwide.

Her current project is the new Spider-Man filming in New York. She says every project presents a challenge to make the story come alive and the characters become people. Her research doesn’t just include what the fashions of the movie’s period were, but also the etiquette of the time to understand how people lived in their clothes.

Scott will receive her Designing Women award from Titanic producer Jon Landau.

The entire creative team of FX’s The Americans will receive the ensemble award from Variety Ensemble Award for their work recreating the look of the early 1980s. Costume designer Jenny Gering, head of makeup Lori Hicks and hair department head Peg Schierholz will accept the award from actor Richard Thomas. — MIMI SPILLANE

Buy your Designing Women 2013 tickets today!