Ingrid Grimes-Myles
Ingrid Grimes-MylesLifelong Chicagoan Ingrid Grimes-Myles lived "a fairy tale" for an intense 14 months while working as Michelle Obama's makeup artist. She was there during the campaign, at the Democratic convention, the Ballot Night rally in Grant Park, at the inaugural activities, on foreign trips, for the Vogue profile, the threescore Minutes interview, and much more.

Instead of moving to Washington—her hubby, David Myles, a vice president at U.Southward. Equities who also runs a family real manor business concern, could non leave Chicago—she flew there in one case a week, checked into the Hay-Adams Hotel (a brusque walk to the White House), and devoted herself to Michelle. When the First Lady traveled here or abroad, Grimes-Myles, 51, grabbed her brushes and bottles and went with her.

Grimes-Myles also did makeup for Michelle'southward mother, Marian Robinson. How about the president? "Just powder, before televised White House speeches—and very, very petty; he'south not a fan of makeup, not at all, and he is blessed with really lovely skin." On a bitterly cold Sat in Springfield in February 2007 when and so-Senator Barack Obama announced he was running for the White Firm, she had powdered his confront considering "being exterior results in red ears and nose, and then I was correcting for the environment."

If anyone in Chicago noticed that Grimes-Myles'due south gig was upwardly, I missed the report. When I telephoned her at her Hyde Park townhouse on Sunday afternoon, she was reading the very story that prompted my call: a 4000-plus-discussion Washington Post contour published last calendar week, about Grimes-Myles's successor, Derrick Rutledge.

So what happened to Ingrid Grimes-Myles? Post reporter Keith Alexander notes that Rutledge, a D.C. native, won the coveted gig in spring 2009 "…after Obama's Chicago artist got tired of commuting to Washington." Her name appears nowhere in the story, which left me with the impression that Michelle had traded up.

Admittedly non, Grimes-Myles says. It was she who decided that she needed to be home to pay attending to her youngest, Donald, now a high-school freshman. "I do accept a family. Information technology was very, very hard on me and on them," says the self-described "true Chicago gal" who grew upward on the South Side, the daughter of a Chicago cop and a homemaker, a product of CPS schools, a graduate of UIC with a degree in psychology.

Not just was she not pushed aside, Grimes-Myles says, but in the end, it was she who chosen Michelle's banana and suggested that Rutledge was the right person for the job. "I wanted to find somebody who was really, really good who lived in the D.C. expanse."

She has never met Rutledge but says that "nobody is Michelle'southward exclusive makeup artist anymore. She has a bench three or four deep." Grimes-Myles expects that she'll practise the Outset Lady'due south makeup as the 2012 campaign heats up. She likewise told me the Kickoff Lady ofttimes does her ain makeup. "Early on, I taught her how to practise a clean media confront, and to this twenty-four hours, she is very competent in accomplishing this…. Mrs. Obama could not have a makeup artist for all of her many scheduled appearances."

Information technology has been about six months since she final talked to Michelle, but Grimes-Myles says their friendship—which dates to Barack's days in the state senate—is still stiff. Dorsum then, the Obamas lived in a condo across the street from the Myleses. Obama was doing a telly interview, and the newscaster chosen Grimes-Myles, a friend, who for more than xv years has done the makeup for WGN-TV Morning news personalities and visiting celebs. Grimes-Myles rushed over, simply the senator refused the makeup, and the artist ended up chatting with Michelle. The two women became friends.

Grimes-Myles is now back to her old schedule of arriving at 2:30 a.m. on the WGN-Telly set for a testify that runs from 4 to 9 a.m. Her husband gets Donald—who is actually her nephew; Ingrid is his guardian—up and out to school. (The couple's sons are long out of the business firm—i doing his residency in medicine, the other a dentist.)

And yes, she tells me, information technology is true that she "trained" and so "retrained" Michelle's eyebrows. The arch was too high during the 2008 campaign, making Michelle look angry, and so Grimes-Myles reversed her own work and "retrained" the eyebrows downward. (The Tribune's Ellen Warren described Grimes-Myles as "a genius at eyebrows.")

Over the years, Grimes-Myles has also fabricated upwards the faces of such celebrities and politicians equally Katie Couric, Isabella Rossellini, Caroline Kennedy, the late JFK Jr., Sarah Ferguson, Common, Tyrese, Kate Gosselin, Newt Gingrich, and Rahm Emanuel.

Photograph: Courtesy of Ingrid Grimes-Myles