#24: Lesa — Shoegaze, Cinematic Makeup, Beauty
Meet Slowdive's super fan.
Welcome to Mia’s Queue, a newsletter spotlighting the secret agents of taste among us. In each edition, I chat with an undercover tastemaker infusing creativity and wonder into their (and our!) everyday life. Learn what lights them up, where they find inspiration, and what they think we should all be enjoying right now. Meet Agent 024: Lesa Hannah, an editor and writer who’s spent the last two decades covering the beauty industry.
Slowdive is Lesa Hannah’s Grateful Dead. So I had to meet her. That’s it. That’s the story. (She lives in Toronto and if we lived in the same town, we’d be concert buddies.) My wish for this interview is that you experience it with a band like Ride turned up to 11 — the more fuzz the better, so old Ride please. You can turn it down when we take a left turn to discuss Lesa’s obsession with makeup in film and TV, and I get the download on the products she thinks are so good she’s willing to spend her own dough on them. 💸
So…why Slowdive?!
It was around 1991 when I first heard Ride and My Bloody Valentine and immediately thought, “Oh my God, what is this? This is insane.”
I bought [Slowdive’s] “Just for a Day,” and I thought it was OK, but their next album, “Souvlaki,” which came out in ’93, changed everything.
That August, I was in New York for a month because I had won a contest with Sassy Magazine to be a guest editor on their December issue. Slowdive happened to be playing in New York at that time opening for Catherine Wheel and the editors at Sassy got me an interview with Rob Dickinson, Catherine Wheel’s lead singer. During the soundcheck, I ended up meeting Slowdive as well and established a rapport with Rachel Goswell. I remember I sent her the copy of Sassy when it came out and we started writing letters back and forth. By the next year, when they returned to Toronto, she put me on the guest list for two shows they were doing. Those ended up being their final ones; they broke up after that.
When I started working full-time in magazines and having kids, I kind of lost touch with current music. But I always still loved that stuff from the 90s, and so when Slowdive announced that they were reuniting in 2014, I was like, “Yes, I'm so here for this.” I found Rachel again through social media and we followed each other on Instagram.
In October 2023, I turned 50, and I wanted to do something epic. I saw they were doing a short run of shows in the UK — Glasgow, Manchester, Bristol, London. So I asked a friend whom I met online who also liked shoegaze to join me. She picked me up at Heathrow and it was a little road trip for the two of us. It was one of the best weeks of my life.
Hold on: let’s go back to being pen pals with Rachel. What did you two write about?
She would tell me what was going on with the band. I don't know what I wrote to her. I remember I sent her a sparkly kitty sticker–it was a very popular sticker in the 90s–because I knew she loved cats. I remember getting the letter saying she put it on her guitar.
During lockdown, we would message a lot more and then when I went over to the UK in 2021 and traveled around she invited me to stay with her for two days.
Now that’s a kind person! What else are you passionate about, Lesa?
Shoegaze! I found a whole community online over the pandemic. I love the genre and all the newer bands coming out and ended up getting my own radio show on a shoegaze station based in L.A. called Decay FM.
Who are some of the younger shoegaze bands we should know?
Some of the newer artists I like include:
🎧 sunnbrella
🎧 Cigarettes for Breakfast
🎧 She's Green
🎧 Flyying Colours
🎧 Deserta
What aspects of beauty light you up?
How much it's changed in terms of how it's talked about but also how it affects and intersects with culture. I started an Instagram account over the pandemic called The Makeup Trailer, where I focus on hair and makeup in film and TV.
I became interested in that ever since I did an interview with a Canadian makeup artist about the movie The Fighter with Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale. It’s a real-life story about a boxer in Boston in the 80s. Wahlberg’s character has five brash sisters and they all have amazing 80s hair and makeup.
I became so obsessed with it that I tracked down the makeup artist who worked on it and I interviewed them for the magazine that I was working at at the time. The decisions for why you do someone's hair and makeup in film and TV is so different from what I had been writing about because it's about pushing the story forward or telling you something about the character.
There was a miniseries called Mrs. America with Cate Blanchett about the Equal Rights Amendment and all the right-wing women were wearing this powder blue eyeshadow.
I became obsessed with [the choice] so I tracked down the makeup artist to ask him about it. Basically, it was the makeup they started to do when they were teens and they just got stuck. It was supposed to be emblematic of conservatives who don't like change. They were stuck in their own ways with their blue eyeshadow.
[Makeup and hair artists] are so happy to talk about it; most of the time, if anyone's getting an interview, it's the costume people. When I approach them [for my Instagram or a story], they are so excited to talk about it. There's so much research involved. The average viewer has no idea how they decide what they do and what it's telling you about the character. It’s a whole other side of beauty that I find so interesting.
Do you have any favorite makeup or beauty products that you want to recommend?
🧴I love this German brand called Weleda — they make a thick, iconic skin cream called Skin Food. It's been around since 1926. It's an amazing hand cream but great for any dry spots. They released a cleanser last year, Skin Food Oil-to-Milk, that I also love.
👁 When I was in London for Slowdive, I went to the Victoria Beckham makeup counter because there was this silver eyeliner that had been stalking me on Instagram for about a year. I went to go look at it and I put it on the back of my hand and I was like, “Take my money!” It was so good. I’ve worn it at home when I'm not going anywhere just because it's so fun to wear and easy to apply.
🛀 I love this L'Occitane Almond Shower Oil — it's great in the winter. It's a body wash but rather than foam, it’s an oil so it's great because I'm very lazy about putting body cream on after I get out in the winter.
The best place to follow Lesa is on Instagram on her personal account or over at The Makeup Trailer.
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Wow, what a great music! Reminds me of being in NYC in the late 80s/early 90s. I had no clue. This post opened up a whole new world for me, and I'm 66! 😅 I'm sharing this music with my 25 year old daughter. Looking forward to more!