Doing something new is no small feat, it takes a lot of time and dedication. Setting a Guinness World Record is an even bigger challenge and that is exactly what Eronxshaddy, a makeup artist, hopes to do.
Eromosele Edward Ozah, popularly known as Eronxshaddy, is an Edo State-based makeup artist who specialises in SFX (special effects) makeup and beauty makeup. He is a 400 level Agriculture student at the University of Benin. Eronxshaddy is attempting to set a Guinness World Record for The Longest Marathon Applying Makeup.
Eronxshaddy is a self-taught artist who gained a passion for beauty makeup in 2015. He would go to the female hostels in Ben Idahosa Univerity, working with a beauty lady, fixing nails. In a telephone chat with Netng, he tells us how he started:
“My former boss does makeup but she wasn’t really ready to teach. I was ready to learn. I told her about it and she said when the time came, I would learn. But I realised that the more I stayed there, the more time I wasted, and I was never going to learn anything. So I quit the job.”
At this point, he was still trying JAMB. He had no prior knowledge about makeup, and he didn’t go to any makeup school either. All he had was a passion for makeup and to learn. He took his mother’s kit and started practising on his friends. Eromosele says he learned a lot these past few years:
“Over the years, I got to discover that they are lots of beauty artists and I’m really driven by my passion to be different from other artists. Every makeup artist is known for something, different in their own way. Like Anita Brows, she is known for her unique type of brows. I just wanted to be known for something.”
With a drive to be unique, Eromosele develops a love for SFX. He picked up homemade materials and practised hard. His first ever SFX makeup project was titled ‘Zipper Girl’. In October 2019, his work ‘Zipper Girl’ gained a lot of attention on Twitter, accumulating over 160,000 retweets and 340,000 likes. It was a huge feat for him, this being his first foray into SFX. He tells Netng why BeautySFX was his go to:
“I just wanted to be different. I thought about creating characters that others have done. But I decided to make my own characters. There are so many makeup artists but I want to be the only person doing beauty and SFX together, creating a thing called BeautySFX”
Eromosele started doing VFX makeup with basic materials around him. He says he didn’t have any money to buy materials and he would mix tattoo colouring, black eye pencil, red lipstick just to make a blood mix. He improvised a lot because he couldn’t afford the real materials but somehow made it work. Getting models was also an issue because no one wanted to be used as practice.
His motivation to go after a Guinness record came after his work went viral. He wanted to make a bigger platform for the rest of his works which he felt people were not ready for. He wanted a larger audience to showcase his works and the idea was birthed from that need. He continues:
“I discovered that there was no record for the longest makeup marathon, and I couldn’t do SFX, I could only do beauty. So I decided to set the record. This is the fifth application that was approved and it usually takes 12 weeks to approve an application. This is the only one that pulled through”
To set the record, he would have to work with at least 24 models, on which he would create look after look for 24 hours. Speaking with Netng on his endorsement by the Edo State Government, he says he never expected to meet the governor now. He had reached out to the government house for an endorsement, as you need sponsors, and there are certain criteria to fulfil in order to qualify for the Guinness world record slot. He shares with us his surprise to find out he would meet the governor too. He says:
“The day I was to collect the letter, my contact came really late. I and my team had waited for a long time, we were getting tired. Then she came into the conference room and cleared it out. She said the governor wanted to meet me, that she told him about me and that he was really happy to see us and he wanted to support us. I was shocked to the bone.”
Eromosele said he’s been preparing his body and his mind to take on the herculean task. 24 hours is a lot of work and with little to no breaks, this makeup artist from Edo state is preparing to what has never been done anywhere in the world. Setting this record will make him the first makeup artist even in the world to attempt a marathon and that will also be a huge victory, not just for him, but for the makeup community in Nigeria as a whole.
