My Vegas Summer With Britney Spears

When I got the call to do Britney Spears’ makeup in Vegas, I’m not going to lie—I was excited.

The way I landed the gig was actually a funny six-degrees-of-Hollywood story. Her publicist was the one who referred me. He also repped Kristanna, whose glam I’d done, and Meredith Brooks—yes, Meredith Brooks of the “Bitch” song, who I had worked with on the VH1 Divas concerts—so he figured I’d be a good match for Britney. He was right.

Britney is fun. She genuinely loves hair and makeup, and honestly, it all looks incredible on her—she’s one of those rare faces where you can barely go wrong. We did a couple of photos for her to post during our time together. One was a shot of her back, taken from behind after a killer workout. I captioned it “Britney’s Back,” and she thought it was cute enough to post herself.

Another time, we got into a whole bit about Austin Powers and staged a “one million dollars” pinky-to-the-mouth photo, which was just ridiculous and perfect. In between all that, we talked about dating, movies, whatever was going on—the normal stuff you talk about when you’re sitting across from someone for hours at a time. That whole summer felt less like work and more like a slumber party that happened to have really good lighting.

The scheduling that season was its own kind of magic trick. At the same time I was doing Britney, I was also glamming Reba across the street at Caesars Palace. The two of them never once overlapped—the week Britney wrapped her run of shows at Planet Hollywood was the exact week Reba’s residency picked up at Caesars. So I’d finish with one, cross the Strip and start right back up with the other.

Looking back, that’s the part of this job people don’t always picture—it’s not just the glam chair and the flashbulbs; it’s the logistics of trotting yourself and your brushes from marquee to marquee (in the desert, no less), all while keeping two completely different women feeling like themselves under two completely different sets of lights. But that’s Vegas for you. And that’s the job I love.