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"  Photo: L&amp;#039;Or\u00E9al Paris L&amp;#039;Or\u00E9al Paris is bringing one of the biggest names in beauty on board as a consultant. Billy Brasfield, the man that gave Lady Gaga her gap and Beyonc\u00E9 her shine, joins the cosmetic powerhouse in December and will lend a hand on everything from social media to product development. ELLE.com sat down with Brasfield for an exclusive chat about the partnership, his favorite famous faces, and his Mississippi roots. ELLE: You&amp;#039;ve worked on some pretty famous faces, do they let you be the creative force or is it more of a collaborative effort? Billy Brasfield: Celebrities are real, ordinary people in an extraordinary situation. They own their face, they have an opinion, and some of my clients have an incredible sense of style. In the very least, it&amp;#039;s a collab. I&amp;#039;ve learned from them as I hope they&amp;#039;ve learned from me.  ELLE: What are some of your favorite looks that you&amp;#039;ve created?  BB: I get excited thinking about working with Missy Elliott during her first project. She really was the first Gaga and pioneered something that no one had ever done. The video I did with her, &amp;#039;She&amp;#039;s A Bitch&amp;#039;, I look at that still and I don&amp;#039;t how I did that and how that all stayed on her. She was covered in black makeup and crystals, underwater. It was very much by the seat of my pants.  Working with Gaga was amazing. I loved the amfAR red carpet [look] that I did with her and the pearls all over her. With Gaga, no is not an option. She has an idea and you either keep up or you can&amp;#039;t hang with her.  ELLE: What is your most memorable look that you&amp;#039;ve done? BB: In Gaga&amp;#039;s &amp;#039;Born This Way&amp;#039; video, that last shot might be my favorite look that I&amp;#039;ve ever done for her. It&amp;#039;s a close-up of her, her lids are greasy and smoky and she has a gap in her teeth. Awhile before that, her mom had told me this story about her teeth when she was little\u2014she had this big space between them and kids made fun of her. I always remembered that, so for the video, [which was] all about celebrating who you are and your imperfections being beautiful, I thought it would be fitting to put that gap in her teeth. I grabbed a marker last minute and just drew that on. The world thought that was a shout out to [Madonna], but it wasn&amp;#039;t. It was a shout out to little Gaga. ELLE: Any tips you&amp;#039;ve picked up from your clients? BB: I&amp;#039;ve learned from all of them, of course. I have a Rolodex in my head that I file through as I work and I think about little things I&amp;#039;ve picked up from everyone. But really, what I&amp;#039;ve learned is that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, it is art and it is subjective. I&amp;#039;m so thrilled to work with L&amp;#039;Or\u00E9al Paris because we share the same philosophy. It&amp;#039;s about self confidence. I&amp;#039;ve learned to listen and to hear what a woman needs and wants in order to feel beautiful. It&amp;#039;s not about me, or me imposing. It&amp;#039;s about her and what makes her feel her most beautiful.  ELLE: What are some of your favorite products to work with? BB: Most of my favorite things are actually L&amp;#039;Or\u00E9al Paris! In my kit for years and years, I&amp;#039;ve always used L&amp;#039;Or\u00E9al Paris Voluminous Mascara. I love the Black or the Carbon Black. And their Infallible liners, I love them all. Even the little brush that comes with the gel ones, I keep those and use them for other things. But I will tell you right now, my absolute all-time favorite product has to be the L&amp;#039;Or\u00E9al Paris Revitalift Miracle Blur [get it at drugstore.com in December and nationwide in 2013]. I haven&amp;#039;t seen anything like it! It&amp;#039;s a colorless, genderless gel-type cream that you put on and it instantly does exactly what it says, it blurs everything. It&amp;#039;s like Photoshop in real time. I couldn&amp;#039;t believe it when I first saw it. ELLE: How did you get connected with L&amp;#039;Or\u00E9al Paris? BB: It was the nicest thing and the chicest thing that&amp;#039;s ever happened to me. I was invited to Cannes with them as their guest, and I&amp;#039;ve never been treated more like a star in my life. It was such an amazing experience. What I love about L&amp;#039;Or\u00E9al Paris is that the business is run almost like a small, family-run business\u2014everyone is involved from a passionate point of view.  ELLE: What are you most excited to bring to the brand? BB: A voice. What is the most exciting to me is I work hard at being relevant in terms of social media. I have access to fans that follow me on Twitter and Facebook. I have the ear of customers from ages 14 to 84. It&amp;#039;s exciting to help them bridge that gap from the lab to the hands of the consumer. I have my hands in everything with them, from on-camera stuff to helping develop colors and cosmetics. For me, that is a dream come true. I&amp;#039;m a self-taught guy from a little town in Mississippi. To work with L&amp;#039;Or\u00E9al Paris on creating colors is the pinnacle of my career.  ELLE: Who inspires you and your creativity? BB: I love what I do. I&amp;#039;m not a very book-smart person. There&amp;#039;s a reason that the universe directed me this way. I&amp;#039;m completely driven creatively. I get it everywhere. I love to garden and interior decorating. I get a lot of inspiration from those.  ELLE: You create some pretty wild looks for your clients. How are you going to relate beautiful, wearable looks for the everyday woman? BB: The everyday woman, the mom in Kansas, I&amp;#039;m from there. Those are my friends, my family. I want to help L&amp;#039;Or\u00E9al Paris to actually speak to women, take the intimidation out, and bring fun back to makeup. It washes off, it&amp;#039;s not a big deal. A lot of women are afraid to make a mistake. It&amp;#039;s part self-confidence, [but] companies haven&amp;#039;t found a way to do make it easier. I want to do that. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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