Costume & Make-Up

Joanne Gair

Joanne Gair (born c. 1958), nicknamed Kiwi Jo, is a New Zealand-born and -raised make-up artist and body painter whose body paintings have been featured in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue from 1999 to 2017. She is considered the world's leading trompe-l'œil body painter and make-up artist, and she became famous with a Vanity Fair Demi's Birthday Suit cover of Demi Moore in a body painting in 1992. Her Disappearing Model was featured on the highest-rated episode of Ripley's Believe It or Not. She is the daughter of Hon. George Gair, a former New Zealand politician. In addition to achieving pop culture prominence and respect in the fashion and art worlds starting with her body painting of Demi Moore, she is a make-up artist in the rock and roll world who has helped several of her music clients win fashion and style awards. She is also considered a fashion and art trendsetter, and for a long time she was associated with Madonna. In 2001, she had her first retrospective and in 2005, she published her first book on body painting. At the peak of her pop culture fame after the Vanity Fair cover, she was seriously considered for an Absolut Vodka Absolute Gair ad campaign. She has done magazine editorial work, and in 2005, she became a photographer of her own body paintings in both books and magazines.