One very hot summer’s day a long Time ago, I was walking up Third Avenue and coming towards me was a wonderful figure dressed in black and white. I remember thinking, before I realized who it was, that here was someone with super style – someone who knew how to look good in that terrible humidity and heat. As he drew nearer, I realized it was my friend Way Bandy. I thought, wouldn’t you know it would be Way ! It had to be. One wanted it to be, and one wants, still, to see that figure rushing down Third Avenue. I guess that, although I’ve worked on magazines for years, I will never cease to admire and be amazed by talent. Way Bandy was big talent: All of us who were fortunate enough to have worked with him won’t forget the marvelous personality, and, definitely. we will never forget the talent. What a loss to us as editors. What a loss to us as pals.
Grace Mirabella, editor of Mirabella.
Way Bandy, who was born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1941, found his way to New York City in the late 1960s after an eclectic career path that inculded modeling for department stores, painting portraits, and teaching high-school English. ln New York Bandy worked as a skin-care specialist and make-up instructor prior to starting his own freelance business in 1971. Bandy soon became one of the fashion world’s highest-paid and best-known makeup artists. ln the 1970s and early ’80s, his palette and brushes perfected the faces that adorned many a magazine cover shot by the likes of Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, and Francesco Scavullo. Bandy also cultivated a clientele of famous women and men – Elizabeth Taylor, Mick Jagger, Catherine Deneuve. Kris Kristofferson, Nancy Reagan, and Mikhail Baryshnikov among them – and wrote two bestselling books. Though he was intimately familiar with some of the planet’s most exquisite faces, he believed genuine beauty was generated from within, once saying that he thought Georgia O’Keeffe was the most beautiful woman in the world. Way Bandy died in New York City on August 13, 1986.
