Beyond the Brush: Craft as a Flashlight

How To Stay Sharp in a World Obsessed With Speed

There’s something you come to understand the longer you work in this industry: belief is what gets you in the door, but craft is what keeps you in the room. It’s the constant. The thing that builds you when no one’s looking and steadies you when everything feels up in the air.

Craft isn’t a trend. It’s the practice that sharpens your eye, steadies your hand, and builds your taste over time. It’s not always showy. It’s rarely applauded. But it’s the reason you stay ready.

And in makeup? That shows up in the smallest ways. Choosing the perfect undertone correction that no one will consciously notice—but makes all the difference. Creating skin so seamless it vanishes into the frame. Knowing when to hold back, and when to bring the unexpected. That balance of precision and imagination. Looking back to old masters and archive imagery for references, and then turning it into something entirely your own.

You don’t need money or massive momentum to work on your craft. You need attention. Curiosity. The willingness to get a bit obsessed with detail. And that, truly, is what separates good from great.

So when someone throws you a five-minute brief and an entire set is waiting? That’s when it kicks in. All the quiet hours. All the time spent testing, learning, observing. That’s when craft becomes your muscle memory.

Craft is belief anchored in process—not applause.

In a world that wants the proof first—before the pay, before the respect—craft is your counterargument. You keep building. You refine. You deliver something that means something—whether it books or not. That’s the difference between content and craft: one chases clicks, the other holds up when no one’s watching.

You don’t need validation to be valid. You need conviction.
And that’s the part no one can give you.

Conviction is what gets you to practice when the big jobs go to someone else. It’s what makes you stay curious, even when you’re underpaid, or overlooked, or on your third unpaid test shoot of the month. It’s not loud. It’s not fun. It’s not shareable.

And when belief starts to dry up? Craft is what saves you.

Not the kind of “craft” slapped on mugs or stitched into merch. I mean the real thing. The work beneath the work. The time you put into getting it right—when no one’s watching, when no one’s clapping, when it’s 3am and you’re elbow-deep in texture tests or colour studies.

Lately, I’ve been turning this over a lot. Who really gets to craft? Who gets the space, the money, the time to really dig in and refine what they do? I keep thinking about how much of a luxury it is to be able to create without having admin and bills breathing down your neck. But truthfully? Most people who are making good work are also trying to make rent.

So maybe that’s why craft matters so much. Because when everything else is uncertain—when the clients go quiet —craft is the anchor. It’s the one part of this career that’s yours. Yours to build, yours to return to, yours to keep sharp. It’s your best ally.

And in makeup? That shows up in the smallest ways. Picking the exact right undertone when no one would’ve noticed the wrong one. Knowing when to stop. Knowing how to bring skin to life without overpowering it. Sometimes it’s in the restraint. Sometimes it’s in the wild card—like reaching for a colour you saw in a Turner painting and making it sing on a modern face. Looking backwards to move forward. That’s craft.

And maybe that’s the whole thing: if you don’t have money, or the kind of work that allows you time to think, you still have that. You can still dig. Still keep your eye thirsty. Still care. It’s not about scale—it’s about attention to detail.

Which is why it hits so hard when someone hands you a mood board and says “go,” and you’ve got five minutes and a room full of people watching. That’s when all those invisible hours of practice show up. That’s when you don’t reach for panic—you reach for process. Because you’ve built the reference points. You’ve done the work and now you can excel.

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What This Means for Creatives

Craft isn’t a side hustle. It’s what you do outside of what you do. It’s the obsessive part, the unpaid part, the part no one sees but everyone feels in the final result. Craft is giving a shit about the details no one asked for. It’s repetition, refinement, reading five books on something just because it’s been nagging at you. It’s reworking a thing until it’s right—not for Instagram, not for the client, but because it would keep you awake otherwise. Craft is what makes the paid work possible. It’s the muscle memory you build in quiet moments, so that when the brief is vague and the pressure’s on, you’re not scrambling—you’re drawing from a deep well of knowing. That’s why it’s never been about talent. It’s about stamina. Curiosity. The willingness to get good at something long before anyone is watching.

For me, craft meant making a product. But before that, it meant baking. Metalwork. Ceramics. Textures. The feeling of physically working with my hands. I mean, ceramics require patience—I’ve got limited reserves there. Baking needs precision—also not my strongest suit. But both taught me something. That process matters. That material matters. That the urge to makesomething doesn’t always have to make sense straight away. Those practices—those seemingly unrelated hours—are what eventually led me to create a solid body oil. The textures I obsessed over in pastry, the contrast I learned to love in glaze and clay—they show up now in everything I do. Not just in product formulation, but in the way I build images. The way I use shine and shadow. Craft, for me, is where detail and imagination collide. It’s not about control—it’s about care. And that kind of care bleeds into everything.

Heritage breeds trust. I keep thinking about JW Anderson’s new shops and his curation of special objects, his collaboration with Wedgwood, and the inclusion of Nicholas Mosse. Something deeply historic done in a way that feels super modern. Those sculptural forms, the earthy tones—it’s all there, just reshaped. And Daniel Roseberry did the same at Schiaparelli. He didn’t just pull a reference. He used it—took antique ribbons and rebuilt them into sculptural, futuristic gowns. That’s how you keep legacy alive. You honour the past, but you also push it forward.

And for us? We might not have literal archives—no climate-controlled vaults of sketches or couture samples—but we’ve got our own version. Every mentor we studied, every day we spent assisting, every visual reference we tucked away. Every book we dog-eared, documentary we devoured, poem we couldn’t stop thinking about. Even the songs we looped obsessively during a particular project—they all leave a mark. These are our personal footnotes. The rabbit holes, the weird fascinations, the things that seemed irrelevant at the time but ended up shaping our taste, our instincts, our output. It’s all stored somewhere, even if it’s not visible. That’s our version of an archive: not curated, not chronological, but no less valuable. Because when you’re asked to pull something out of thin air, to “just make it work,” that’s the well you draw from. And if you haven’t been quietly filling it up over time, you’ll have nothing to give.

Collaboration matters. Real craft rarely happens in a vacuum. It needs friction, energy, a bit of chaos. The best work often begins in the gaps—in the vague brief, the back-and-forth, the moment the stylist’s pulling something from across the room and you’re adjusting instinctively, not because it was planned but because it feels right. And that only happens when everyone brings their own version of an archive to the table. Their taste, their references, their obsessions. The way someone lights a shot, or places a single pin in a wig, or references a film you’ve never seen but now can’t stop thinking about—it can unearth something in you that you didn’t even know was there. That’s the magic of a good team. Not just shared skill, but shared curiosity. You’re not just making something together—you’re reshaping each other’s creative DNA in real time.

But who really gets to craft? Let’s be honest—it’s easier with time and money. The kind of craft that gets Instagrammed, awarded, profiled in a glossy feature... that usually has a budget behind it. I went to a recent perfume launch—major house, under embargo, so I won’t name names—but the level of thought was unreal. The storytelling, the materials, the execution… it was exquisite. That’s what happens when money meets intent. But let’s not pretend that craft only lives at that end of the spectrum.

Because if that were true, none of us would ever make anything good. We might not have the team, the lighting, or six months of R&D—but we’ve got taste. We’ve got standards. And those two things? They can’t be faked, and they cost nothing. Resourcefulness is a skill. So is discernment. So is knowing when something’s not ready and having the guts to hold back. You don’t need a million-pound budget to pursue depth. You just need to care enough not to phone it in. That’s the real craft—showing up with rigour, even when no one’s watching.

Rest isn’t retreat. Let’s drop the guilt around that. Craft needs space. Time to think, to look, to let things land. You can’t innovate when you’re running on fumes. And you definitely can’t make anything interesting when you’re just reacting. Rest doesn’t mean you’ve stopped working—it means you’re preparing. Watching. Absorbing. Lining things up in the back of your mind so that when the time comes, you’re not scrambling—you’re ready.

Sometimes the best thing you can do for your craft is to step away from it. Watch someone else work. Rewatch the masters, and not just in your own field. Go down a rabbit hole. Learn something unrelated. Bake a cake. Take a class. Go see some weird puppetry show. Whatever it is, let your brain stretch without the pressure to produce. That’s where sharpness comes from. Quietly. In the background. When no one’s asking you for anything

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Reclaiming Creative Worth

You don’t need the numbers to tell you you’re good. You know when something’s working. You feel it in your gut, in your hands, in the silence that follows a job well done.

Craft isn’t just a skill. It’s a way of seeing. A way of caring. It’s staying interested—even when things are slow, even when you’re tired, even when no one’s asking. It’s keeping your standards high because that’s just how you’re built.

And honestly? That’s the part I love most. That quiet, unshakable bit. The part that keeps turning ideas over in your head, keeps noticing things, keeps reaching for something better. Craft is the throughline. It’s what makes the work feel worth doing, even when the circumstances aren’t ideal.

It’s easy to get distracted by the noise—the numbers, the trends, the pace of it all. But if you still love making things, you’re not off-track. You’re just doing it properly.

And maybe it doesn’t feel glossy. Maybe it’s slower than you’d like. But if you’re still showing up, still paying attention, still chasing that feeling—then you’re already doing the thing that matters most.

Craft isn’t the side note. It’s the whole point.