You're in the eye of the public and the public is looking back at you as if you are a mirror, blank and infinite.
Beauty is artifice, if the beauty you're talking about is cosmetic. Natural's not in it, much as it pretends to be. The post-digital usually veils this, with great sleight of hand, in the best beauty campaigns and the most seductive editorials, touting the power of the product to transform and transcend. Do we believe this anymore ? I think we do. No matter how far you take it, no matter how Brechtian your post-production gets as an image-maker, we will always want to believe that not only is the image real, but that it is also possible. That is the art of artifice, which is what 21st century fashion has become.