Aug 29, 2022 5 min read

If you’ve ever been on TV – and in Washington, that’s everyone – then you’ve been to “makeup.” If you’ve been very lucky, you’ve landed in the chair of an artist named Rose Procopio Barondess.

Rose, as she’s known to all, has been reinventing the faces of the famous and infamous for more than 40 years. From Mikhail Gorbachev to Betty White and presidents Bill Clinton to Donald Trump, Rose has painted them all and was often among the most requested makeup artists because, old hands knew, she’d transform them from every angle.

Mind you, there are many wonderful, talented makeup artists in the TV news racket. But Rose is special.

Ask Clinton, who signed one of the capes she used to protect clients’ clothing: “Rose – the best gift this side of plastic surgery.” Henry Kissinger wrote: “You did the best you could.” Former White House press secretary Dee Dee Myers genuflected: “I bow at your feet.”

Her cape with these and other notable signatories, as well as Rose’s fully equipped makeup bag, became part of history Monday when Rose hands them over to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History. The museum asked that Rose leave her large toolbox intact, including all her many dabs, paints, powders, brushes and other supplies. “I never would have imagined,” Rose told me, “that my makeup would become a historical artifact.” It was Tim Russert’s idea years ago that she donate them.

She isn’t retiring completely – she still has “special” clients, both private and in the anchor chair. But the pandemic, during which she lost her father, put her work life in perspective. Now seemed the right time to part with her professional keepsakes.

Rose, born in D.C., got into the business early on, making up herself and her sisters. She began modeling at 19 but preferred being behind the scenes to being in front of a camera. “I had more control with makeup,” she recalled, “and I was better at it than I was at modeling.”

Working mostly with network and cable TV – making up Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, Katie Couric, Russert and Chris Matthews, to name a few – she also has traveled the globe with the talent. During the 1996 presidential race between Bill Clinton and Bob Dole, she worked with both campaigns and made up both candidates.

I’ve known Rose since I first appeared as a guest on a Sunday show about 15 years ago. In a matter of minutes, she could turn my barely moisturized face into something people might be willing to tolerate in their living rooms for a few minutes.

For the uninitiated, makeup is essential on camera not so much to make you look better – though that’s a bonus – but to make you look alive. Even before the curse of high-definition TV, studio lighting is so severe that even the best human faces are rendered flat and lifeless without strategic outlining and highlighting.

Let’s be honest; this is hazardous work. You’d have to, literally, get in the face of high maintenance celebrities and personalities, many times an hour, day after day. It is also strangely intimate work, and that doesn’t make it easier. While working, Rose was laser-focused on every pore of your face – which takes some getting used to – and kept her thoughts strictly to herself. But then, I doubt that Michelangelo was chatty while turning a common ceiling into the Sistine Chapel.

And the people she’s painting? They don’t necessarily exude empathy. Rose tells of making up the “breathtakingly handsome” John F. Kennedy Jr. for Russert’s “Meet the Press,” and being told by the show’s producers not to speak to him, not to look at him, not to make eye contact, not to photograph him or ask for an autograph. Rose didn’t say a peep until Kennedy asked her about her cape and asked if he could sign it, too. She turned to Russert and asked if he could autograph it. “Of course, he can!” Russert shouted. Rose recalled of Kennedy: “He was the nicest person in the world.”

Others were often otherwise – either jumpy and nervous or demanding and condescending. The best makeup masters try to put everyone at ease, regardless of agenda. Rose was a master at that. “I recognized that I’m the last person people see before they go on set, and I try to keep that in my mind. Being calm helps them become calmer.”

Makeup artists are also excellent listeners. The makeup room is where people let down their hair, literally, as well as figuratively, and say things they’d never say elsewhere. Pre-show jitters likely enhance this effect. Even some of the most-seasoned veterans still get the shakes before the curtain goes up. Live TV offers myriad opportunities to say something foolish, which, you can be sure, will be remembered and replayed by the Schadenfreude crowd.

The operating assumption is that what you say in makeup stays in makeup – and regular guests often confuse the artists for their therapists. That has me looking forward to her dishy memoir, already in the works with the working title, “All Made Up.”

Relax, Washington. Most people who’ve sat in Rose’s chair have little to worry about. Mostly, we should be grateful, as few of us will ever look as good as we did when she whipped off her cape from around our necks and said, “OK, you’re ready.”

Kathleen Parker is a columnist for the Washington Post. Her email address is kathleenparker@washpost.com.