The Jessica Harlow Blog - Videos, Tutorials, Photos, & Blogs from YouTube's Glamour Guru, MissJessicaHarlow

Hi everyone!

Last Monday morning I instagram-ed a photo of my office area and told you all that I had a photographer over my home to photograph me for an article.

My desk is never, ever, this neat! I took a photo because I knew it would last longer! http://instagr.am/p/IX9wEfJQJd/

I can finally reveal that the article was for Time Out New York Magazine. The actual print issue hit stands today but there is an article up online which I included below:

Jessica Harlow of Miss Jessica Harlow (youtube.com/missjessicaharlow)

Who she is: Harlow first fell into makeup when she was a teen suffering from acne. “I had to find ways to cover it up using concealers,” she explains. But that necessity soon turned into a passion, as she started taking an interest in the makeup looks featured in magazines and music videos. “I was the girl that everybody came to for beauty advice in high school,” she says. While working at Bloomingdale’s makeup counters such as Origins, Laura Mercier and MAC, Harlow started watching other people’s beauty tutorials and was inspired to launch her own channel in February 2009. Within a few months, the St. John’s University undergrad gained enough followers to make her a YouTube Partner—which allows her to generate revenue from her videos through ads—and she dropped out of college to pursue vlogging full time. “School is always going to be there,” she says of her decision. “I felt [that there was] a lot of potential with this.”
About her channel: Harlow’s first video demonstrated how to achieve burlesque performer Dita von Teese’s retro makeup, and the 22-year-old hasn’t strayed from her celebrity-influenced origins since. In addition to producing sexy, wearable looks plucked from pop culture (Megan Fox’s sun-kissed visage, the gold-leaf eyes Emma Watson wore to a Harry Potter premiere), Harlow isn’t afraid to have fun with wild costume makeup—her videos recreating artist-model Rick Genest’s “Zombie Boy” face and Natalie Portman’s dramatic winged eyes from Black Swan make her channel one to bookmark for Halloween. But what sets her apart is the upbeat, positive attitude that has earned her close to 330,000 subscribers. “When I started, everybody was just doing makeup tutorials; nobody was really focusing on self-esteem or inspiring people to have better lives,” says Harlow, who begins her weekly beauty tutorials with the tagline, “Hello, gorgeous!” and has since launched a separate channel (youtube.com/jessicaharlow) devoted to motivational videos. “I always include some sort of inspirational quote or thoughts that I’m having.” Perhaps even more impressive is that the polished, professional videos Harlow films and edits in the basement of her Queens home are rarely rehearsed. “I really never practice my looks before I do them,” she admits.
Go-to product: Although major cosmetic brands such as Lancôme and Bobbi Brown have sponsored videos that feature their products, one item Harlow constantly uses in her tutorials of her own accord is Urban Decay’s Eyeshadow Primer Potion (urbandecay.com). “It keeps your eye makeup on forever,” swears Harlow. “I can tell when someone doesn’t use primer because you’ll see a line of eye shadow clumped up across their lids. This makes [your eye shadow] look exactly the same as when you put it on.”
Watch this now: Harlow’s videos routinely garner six-figure hits, but her most widely watched clip is a how-to on Katy Perry’s technicolor “California Gurls” makeup (it racked up a whopping 6.7 million views). Even if you don’t plan on wearing a blue wig and a cupcake bra anytime soon, you can still learn some helpful tricks about using glitter on your eyelids.

 

xoxo

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