The star shiner: memoir of a celebrity make-up artist

The Star Shiner poses the question: Can a young man from a small rural Kentucky town--fleeing a domineering mother and an abusive, alcoholic father--find recognition and happiness in New York city, working with the high-powered fashion and cosmetic industries, and with some of the world's most famous people--without losing his values and his soul?

After a notable career in fashion illustration and modeling in Paris, Richardson becomes a makeup artist, working with top fashion magazines like Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, and with photographers Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, and Frecesco Scavullo.

The book is more than a celebrity memoir in that it is a narrative of the '70s, weaving the stories of the celebrities with Richardson's own life from the '70s into the '90s, at a time in New York's history when the city's financial difficulties--similar to the ones today--led to corruption, decadence and a lack of law and order.

This was the golden era of fashion and cosmetics when Vogue editor-in-chief Diana Vreeland, Charles Revson and Estee Lauder, the king and queen of cosmetics, and photographers Avedon, Penn, and Scavullo ruled the industries.

The reader is taken into wild nights at Studio 54 and into New York's downtown after-hours dungeons, seething with sex, violence and drugs, where individuals are treated as mere stepping stones to the next sexual encounter.

Then the party ended with the scourge of AIDS that took Richardson's partner and turned Richardson's life around with a spiritual awakening.