Melissa beautifies celebrities and movie stars

Despite having a dad who is Dutch, Melissa von Tongeren is very much a Kenyan.

Based in London where she works as a hair and makeup stylist, and mingles on media sets with everyone from Idris Elba, Christiane Anampour, and James Earl Jones to Daniel Craig, Zoe Kravitz, and Robert Pattinson, she was briefly back in Nairobi recently.

Melissa made a special point of meeting her former teacher, Salma Palmer with whom she had studied at Salma’s Kenya School of Hairdressing many years ago.

It was Salma who insisted BDLIFE meet up with Melissa since she had a remarkable story to tell. She wasn’t wrong.

“I was Salma’s student for nine months in 1990, and I always come to see her whenever I’m back in Kenya,” says Melissa who admits she rarely has time to return to her homeland.

Her hectic schedule as one of London’s busiest hair and makeup stylists keeps her on her toes. It also keeps her at the beck and call of the directors, be they working in film, TV or theatre.

“I have been fortunate in my work since I am one of the few hair stylists [in London] who knows how to deal with both African and European hair,” the 45-year-old beautician tells BDLife.

“I have the other advantage of being a specialist in wigs which are worn by most leading ladies, although primarily those on the stage.”

Melissa knows wigs well, based on her first-hand experience. Consequently, she has had top jobs in the performing arts over the last 25 years.

But none of this would’ve happened if she hadn’t decided to expand her professional skill-set by heading back to school in UK.

“After getting my diploma and working in Nairobi for two years, I realized I couldn’t do much more career-wise unless I went for more training,” Melissa tells us in a What’s App phone call.

She only has a few minutes to talk since she had to back to the film set of ‘The Flash’, [one of the DC comic franchises].

Her decision to do a three-year course in makeup at the London College of Fashion (now the University of the Arts) turned out to be the smartest move she ever made.

“There were very few hair and makeup artists in London at the time,” she says. This meant that she got a job straight away on the West End. (London’s equivalent of New York’s Broadway.)

“I immediately started working on Andrew Lloyd Webber’s ‘Bombay Dreams’ which was the first Indian musical to make it to the West End,” she says.

The show was very popular and this was when she discovered her knowledge of wigs came in handy.

“Wigs are mainly worn in the theatre, but they’re even used in film, though not as frequently.” She adds that these wigs were all made of human hair and cost $1000s of dollars each.

From there, she went to another Lloyd Webber musical, ‘The Woman in White’. It was also on the West End and also had heaps of wigs.

Melissa’s success in those two productions led to her getting promoted to Head of the Hair and Makeup department on the set of ‘Daddy Cool’ which was based on the musical group, Bony M.

“After that, I worked on more musicals than I can count. That was great for me up until I became department head for the Black version of [Tennessee Williams’] ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’, with James Earl Jones, (who played Darth Vader in Star Wars),” she says.

Melissa then set her sights on live TV. She spent the next two years doing that in Australia.

But as she missed London, she returned and instantly got a job with CNN, working with dynamic women like Christiane Anampour and Zein Verje.

“As I was freelance with CNN, I was able to get back to the theatre in time to join the original West End crew of [Lin-Manuel’s award-winning musical] ‘Hamilton’,” Melissa says, noting she was there 14 months.

But she had to leave, once she got a call to come work on the latest James Bond movie, ‘No Time to Die’.

Again, it was her special skill in black hair and wigs that had top studios looking for her.

A graduate of Braeburn High and Green Acres Primary, Melissa says she sought out Salma’s school since her mom had studied there first.

“I wanted to follow in my mom’s footsteps,” she says. That she did, but then, she walked a whole lot farther than that!