Eve Gardiner

In 1936, upon hearing that the Hollywood make-up artist Max Factor Sr. was about to open a salon on London's Old Bond Street, Gardiner successfully applied for a make-up job and received training.^[4][5][6] She was Max Factor's first make-up artist from the United Kingdom.^[6] The following year, she met Factor for the only time and passed on his knowledge of how to disguise facial disfigurements and scarring with make-up after his personal experience with soldiers heavily afflicted by poison gas burns during the First World War.^[4][5] Gardiner's clientele included patients sent to her by the plastic surgeon Harold Gillies for remedial camouflage make-up.^[7] She was leased to the BBC by Max Factor in 1938, working at the Radio Show in London since the corporation had no make-up artists.^[7] Gardiner did 12-hour stints applying make-up on artists for every television programme that was held at the exhibition,^[4] and continued to refine the technique from the era of monochrome television to the transition to colour systems.^[1][5]

The Second World War brought about the closure of Max Factor's London salon and Gardiner was conscripted to work in industry.^[7] She completed a 16-week crash course in mathematics, trigonometry and welding,^[4] becoming an aero-engine inspector who was trained to check 26,000 different engine components in a repair depot for seven days a week.^[3][7] The salon was reopened following the end of the war and Gardiner was appointed head and later director of beauty.^[4] Not long after, Gardiner was approached by St Dunstan's Institute for the Blind to aid women who were blinded during the war and subsequently developed depression because they were unable to see and thus not able to apply their make-up in their rehabilitation.^[4][5][6] She helped them by blinding herself by sitting in a darkened room that had no mirrors and developed sightless techniques of adornment,^[7] which would be assembled onto the audio cassette A Touch of Beauty that was released for blind women.^[5]

Gardiner also developed a close association with the plastic surgeon Archibald McIndoe and members of his "Guinea Pig Club" to disguise those Royal Air Force members who had suffered the most severe scarring.^[1] Ambulance-loads of war veterans arrived at the salon for treatment and she was required to experiment to locate methods to handle cosmetics with no risk of confusion and applying them as discreetly and precisely as before.^[8] Gardiner was approached by the Royal London Society for the Blind to educate a class of blind teenage girls at Dorton House in Sevenoaks and also taught at Linden Lodge School for the Blind in Wimbledon,^[8] educating in skin care and make-up by taking her students through a routine of using their fingers to "see" their faces.^[4][3]

Another part of her work at Max Factor was in the London theatre scene in which she arranged the make-up of a number of major stage productions that were held in the post-war years.^[1][5] This included the Festival of Britain productions of 1951 Caesar and Cleopatra and Antony and Cleopatra that starred Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh.^[1] She also worked in make-up for the Coronation of Elizabeth II.^[7] Following the decline in Max Factor's profits in the early 1970s,^[1] their London salon was closed in 1974.^[4] She went into semi-retirement in the same year,^[3] and continued to work for Max Factor as an adviser and lectured at women's clubs.^[4] In 1988, Gardiner was appointed to the Academy of Legends at the Esthetics World Expo 88 in Dallas, Texas,^[5] where she was the primary speaker.^[4]

Gardiner was an amateur artist.^[6]

In 1990, she married her cousin, the retired Canadian Army officer Lieutenant-Colonel Michael David Gardiner.^[1] She died at Ealing Hospital in London on 1 June 1992.^[1]