Ten­nille Al­leyne

The sto­ry of es­teemed make­up artist and Beau­ty Con­sul­tant Di­anne John has been long in com­ing, but as the old say­ing goes, 'noth­ing hap­pens be­fore its time'. Many are fa­mil­iar with her note­wor­thy how-to ar­ti­cles in Guardian Me­dia Ltd's Wom­an­Wise mag­a­zine which give ad­vice and tips for cre­at­ing glam­orous wed­ding looks, achiev­ing di­va glam and pro­duc­ing flaw­less faces. Be­lieve it or not, this stun­ning woman has been in the busi­ness for more than ten years, but her ex­pe­ri­ences cov­er more than a life­time of ded­i­ca­tion to her craft.

As John shared her decade-long jour­ney, she re­called leav­ing the bank­ing in­dus­try where she worked for sev­er­al years as be­ing the wa­ter­shed mo­ment that be­gan her life change. "I used to work in the Projects and De­vel­op­ment de­part­ment and that called for very long hours," she ex­plained. "When I had my sec­ond child I was not able to give my fam­i­ly the at­ten­tion they de­served. I re­mem­ber Miles Mon­roe say­ing that God ac­tu­al­ly gives you a sense of what your pur­pose is when you are young and if you are mis­guid­ed, you can ac­tu­al­ly look back in your teenage years and see what your pur­pose is."

In­spired by Mon­roe, John de­cid­ed to leave the bank­ing in­dus­try for good and rec­on­cile with her child­hood pas­sion of beau­ty cul­ture. Ini­tial­ly want­i­ng to be an aes­theti­cian, the top notch artist de­cid­ed to stream­line her de­sire and fo­cused sole­ly on make up artistry.

"I al­ways loved make up as a child and I would watch TLC for their makeover shows," John con­fessed.

She then em­barked on her train­ing, first at SASHA cos­met­ics and then un­der in­ter­na­tion­al­ly es­teemed artist, Ephraim Hunte. More re­cent­ly, John has re­fined her craft un­der the tute­lage of Danes­sa Myricks in the art of con­tour­ing and per­fect­ing the skin and lat­er stud­ied air­brush­ing in Man­hat­tan, Temp­tu. Things be­gan evolv­ing pret­ty quick­ly for John, who at one time called around to var­i­ous ad­ver­tis­ing agen­cies seek­ing work but was ini­tial­ly un­suc­cess­ful. Her break came when CNB Ad­ver­tis­ing hired her over the phone.

"When I reached the event, they told me I had sev­en min­utes to do the make­up. Af­ter I was fin­ished, they were re­al­ly im­pressed and kept hir­ing me from then on," she said. A year lat­er, John's ca­reer sta­bilised and to­day, she is now the go-to pro­fes­sion­al where make-up artistry is con­cerned.

The es­teemed artist has done sev­er­al in­ter­na­tion­al com­mer­cials with Cap­tain Mor­gan Par­rot Bay Rum which was di­rect­ed by The House of Ush­er Films from Los An­ge­les, along with lo­cal com­mer­cials, print and bill­boards for Bmo­bile, Carib, Dig­i­cel and R.B.C. among oth­ers. John has al­so worked for lo­cal tele­vi­sion sta­tions, mag­a­zines such as Caribbean Belle and Shabeau, Car­ni­val launch­es and Look Books. She even re­called do­ing make up for one of Pres­i­dent Oba­ma's of­fi­cials dur­ing his vis­it to the Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as a few years ago.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, John was flown to Mex­i­co to at­tend MAC's Au­tumn and Win­ter Trend Pre­sen­ta­tion to rep­re­sent Trinidad and To­ba­go on in­vi­ta­tion from their se­nior make­up artist for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, Gisel Ca­bi­lo, in Au­gust 2012. A serendip­i­tous time in­deed, for she was able to show­case her­self to the fullest; new op­por­tu­ni­ties have been pour­ing in steadi­ly since.

With such a de­mand­ing sched­ule, one won­ders how this moth­er of five bal­ances it all. "My job can be very de­mand­ing but I have a great moth­er in law and hus­band and we all pool to­geth­er. I do try to take Sun­days off al­so," John said with a smile. Al­though the renowned make up afi­ciona­do im­mense­ly en­joys her full time job, she is not afraid to give us a re­al­i­ty check about the in­dus­try.

"Some­times peo­ple can be very un­scrupu­lous and make­up artists tend to be very guard­ed peo­ple be­cause oth­er artists try to un­der­cut them," she said. "I have sur­vived all these years be­cause of my faith in God. He opens the doors and clos­es them. Some­times I'm like a psy­chol­o­gist be­cause peo­ple con­fide in me when they sit in that chair. I love to trans­form women be­cause a lot of them suf­fer from low self es­teem."

Al­though John's fans and well wish­ers are in awe of her mile­stone achieve­ments, she is still as hun­gry as when she first start­ed. She an­tic­i­pates a brighter fu­ture as she be­lieves that the pin­na­cle of her tal­ent and pur­pose is still un­tapped. "I work hard and I love what I do. Every day is a dif­fer­ent chal­lenge but I'm up for it. I still have a lot to learn and a lot to do be­cause I have not achieved what I'm sup­posed to yet."