Food x Makeup

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Salonee Patel x Tina Khatri
Photography by Ella Costache
Taara Issue 03

R

How did you meet? What’s the creative crossover?

Tina: salonee used to work in makeup, so she understands the world I’m in, and I’ve always had a deep appreciation for food - I see it as closely related to makeup. At first, it wasn’t anything concrete, but then we had this lightning-bolt moment of realizing: people would actually want to hear this conversation. Both of our crafts get simplified, and they are both crafts that are very seen as very womanly.

Salonee: Cooking in itself is seen as a job for females, mostly, but professionally it’s very male dominated. And to then get creative in this field is also another challenge in itself. How do you battle that, and make space for yourself as a woman? And then, how does that intersect with the rest of the industry?

The process of undoing what you both just mentioned is a long one. Can you unpack this shoot, the philosophy behind it?

Salonee: When we think about food, we think with a lot of emotion - from comfort to luxury to happiness to sadness. Every single emotion you go through could be food related, or it could be dealt with by food. So for example, one of the dishes that I did was a very simple khichdi. It’s a lentil and rice dish, extremely simple, super comforting. The simplicity of it reminds me of home. It’s a healthy dish to clear out your stomach if you’ve got issues. It has just turmeric, rice, lentils with a side of yogurt. But the dish itself could be interpreted in so many different ways when you see it visually …

Tina: The visual implication of it is interesting, because I share a lot of those same memories with this dish, the soft and tender loving nature of it is very maternal. What I found interesting while we shot it, was the use of Aker Fassi (moroccan tint). Salonee, just thinking organically, used that to put the yogurt in. That’s a beautiful crossover between beauty and makeup. It’s seen very literally by how we ended up presenting these dishes. When pulling for references for this look, I immediately started using pictures of my friends’ mums. When Mother’s Day comes along, I’m screenshotting all your mothers. I have no shame, and I’m using that! I find the vintage, nostalgic sense of beauty that we have a connection to, as something that feels warm and comforting. It’s not taking it so literally, but it’s taking the feeling that it invokes, because makeup can invoke the same feeling as food can invoke, and we can do it in a way that is symbiotic.

Can you tell us a bit more, Tina, about the makeup reference and how it was brought to life?

Tina: I peered back into my own memories and my own experiences of my mother growing up. You’re not just having your mother’s dish, you’re having your ancestors’ dishes. And with Asian beauty, especially Indian beauty, we have a very specific notion. If we take it away from the bridal lens, you’re looking more at what you see at the function, than what you see at the community level. All of this makeup felt very reminiscent. I know so many aunties that love maroon metallic, that love a little bit of a sparkle. For me, it’s playing into the amusement of it and finding a sanctuary within it. Khichdi can be prescriptive when you’re feeling down, but makeup is more of a memory - it starts an emotional and sensory chain reaction.

Salonee: Making this dish, and even creating the makeup look was in many ways, about restoring a sense of normalcy. Take, for example, the metallic makeup look: for the women of our culture, it’s something so familiar, so everyday. Yet when viewed through a Western lens, it suddenly becomes exotic, almost sensationalized. As we said earlier, we’re handing over the recipe - both literally and metaphorically. These looks, these dishes, they are deeply homely, steeped in memories of our mothers, aunties, uncles, family gatherings. Khichdi is actually a poor person’s dish; it’s what people eat every day. There’s something beautiful in reclaiming that ordinariness, in bringing that sense of everyday normalcy back to these looks, these meals - before they get gentrified, overhyped, or stripped from their roots.

Tina: The makeup itself, like the dishes, exist in an accessible place of normalcy. A way I personally access this space is through my mum’s old lipsticks, of course they are purely sentimental mementos. They have this beautiful sparkle, this soft sheen that’s so evocative of her. Everyone’s kiss, everyone’s lip, has its own taste- you carry that little memory with you, that moment of connection, that passing-down. It only makes sense that these aesthetics, these practices, filter through, trickling down into the broader beauty ecosystem. It makes you wonder: back then, how was it accessible? Was it a two-product routine? A single lipstick doing double duty? Was it more natural, pared-back makeup? These are the roots we’re touching, the history we’re still carrying forward today.

Salonee: As far as I know, eyeliner (kohl) is where it all started. It wasn’t just cosmetic; it was seen as medicinal, even spiritual, much like how many of our traditional dishes are viewed. I truly believe a lot of what we now call “glam makeup” traces back to South Asian women. It’s not necessarily about casual, everyday beauty - it’s tied to bridal rituals, to big life moments. So many of us grew up in cultures where makeup was kept from us for a long time; it wasn’t until you reached marriageable age that you suddenly went from no makeup to everything. It’s beautiful, if you look back at older art or tantric paintings you see women with r!t on their lips, these elegant side profiles, these stylized gestures. We have such a rich history with makeup, a deep rooted connection. Did we invent it? No. But the way I see soft glam today - it screams Asian. It feels tender, it feels warm, it feels comforting. And even if it’s not familiar to you, it’s inherently accessible, because it carries that deep cultural resonance

This constant negotiation, this ongoing fight for space, for craft, for the right to reconnect with who you are. Over time, it can crystallize into a deeply nostalgic, almost aching relationship to your heritage. I wonder - how do you see this diaspora effect on identity and belonging?

Tina: Lately, I’ve been feeling quite homesick during Fashion Week season. I do the circuit in London, Milan, and Paris, and it’s not exactly the most inclusive space. When I’m travelling I love to find little moments of home, being intoxicated on orange wine secretly nibbling on jalebi under the bar table. Food and beauty are one of the same, they function as protective armor. It gives you something solid to hold onto, a way to ground yourself.

Salonee: India is vast, and within one cuisine you get endless varieties: different states, spices, regional flavors. As Indians, we grow up experiencing food from many regions. Indian cuisine moves through different phases of your life, always offering something you can relate to, something that grounds you. But here in this country, Indian food has been so bastardized. The essence, the depth, the complexity of Indian cuisine is rarely honored the way it should be. I wasn’t born in India, but through food, I’ve always been tied there. For me, it’s about reclaiming power. You think you can cook a dal? I’ve had so many white chefs come up to me, challenging me, saying they can cook better Indian food than Indian people. Why not take back my power? Why not get creative, bastardize my own dishes if I want to, spin them, remix them — but always, always bring it back home.

Tina: A change I’ve seen is how people are interacting with beauty now: they’re reconnecting with the soil, with the essence of what ties them back to their roots. It’s in the everyday details: putting kohl in their eyes, winging it out sharply, wearing it not just for a look, but as their inheritance. This community-led approach to makeup goes hand in hand with how I became acclimated with makeup. It was through subculture and the club. Stripping it back to these elements of tender spaces of care, with makeup that is not based on trends but in what’s made for us - creating our own idea of how beauty shaped us and our stories. It’s especially great to see a new wave of people engage with this - there’s something truly moving in watching them interact with how our ancestors wore makeup, how they ate, how they lived - and to reclaim that as something entirely their own. I think we’re seeing a real shift right now, maybe even within the broader fashion system, the cultural landscape.

Salonee: Absolutely. Through both our crafts whether it’s creating a look or a dish, we’re ultimately trying to evoke a feeling in other people. It’s a kind of reflection: a glimpse of how you’re feeling, who you are, or how you see the world, even if it’s just a fragment. I spend a lot of time away from home, so the only way I stay connected to the women who raised me, is through the dishes I make. When I’m abroad, I bring their techniques, spices, and rhythms into my kitchen. It’s a way to comfort and soothe myself, but also to pass that feeling onto the people eating my food. If you cook with love, you taste the love. For me, that’s essential: to carry a part of my family, my history, into everything I cook, and to offer that to others.

Tina: Another essential element here is world-building - because, fundamentally, that’s what all of this is. Personally, I always say: I pull the essence, the energy, a feeling out of people, and from there, I build. The love you put into something, the emotion you pour in, the atmosphere you create, it’s all a form of world-building. What we’re doing is inviting you into a world we know intimately, whose corners and textures we understand on a cellular level. You’re on a safe journey, and we’re walking you through all the possibilities, all the layers, all the magic that might be. And here’s the beautiful part: makeup changes the way you interact with the world. We’re not just building a fictional, fantasy world; we’re stepping into something with real, actionable impact. Even the makeup you wear yourself affects how you act. It shifts something inside. So it’s not only about what we create for others, it’s also about what we choose to consume and carry within ourselves.

Bouncing off what you said about integrating your culture with the country's culture that you're in - how was that approach with the fish dish and your background in working for a kitchen in Marseilles?

Salonee: When I cook my food, it's always homely - the spices, the flavors, it's always a little bit of effusion, it's things that I know and I've grown up with. But I also love to work in restaurants that have nothing to do with Indian food - I've worked in Japanese and Middle Eastern spots in Marseille.

Tina: I think it's about simplicity, stripping everything back and taking everything to its fundamental cause. It takes vulnerability to look at these chefing experiences, where you're probably the odd man out, the person that doesn't necessarily have this ingrained knowledge, and just connecting and learning from people who are great at their own jobs and being taken under their wing. That nourishment comes with not just the educational side of things, but also with that experience, is its own blissful energy.

Salonee: Absolutely. It's all about learning from other people and inspiring my own craft. The fish dish was a red mullet with a dressing of wild strawberries, curry leaf, ginger, shallots, garlic, so it had a bit of a South Indian touch. I chose a red mullet because the color just gets to me. Eating raw fish for certain people is a luxury. When you see a sashimi dish or a crudo, you think it's going to be expensive or you’re not accustomed to it. It touches on vulnerability, because it's so raw and open. Vulnerability is also a luxury for some people - so it can tie into that too.

Tina: I think there's something beautiful with the fish because it's very visceral, and the way that it's plated is like lotus leaves on a pond. It's very delicate. It has a whimsical nature to it. It seems quite absurd, it's quite surreal in a sense. Then pairing it with body painting that has the most realistic tones - we're asking you to look outside of yourself and outside of your own experience. Few people have had experience with raw things.

Salonee: I love the playful nature of raw fish, and pairing that with body paint, felt risky, almost dangerous. With vulnerability being a privilege: it’s a risky privilege, this space of play. Vulnerability is a risk you have to take; but it comes with amazing rewards. When you present it in a way where it doesn’t feel like raw fish, when it’s framed in a world like a pond you dip your chopsticks into, surrounded by inviting, familiar flavors, there’s a connector point. You can slip into this little magical realm, and it becomes something more considered, more approachable. The way we incorporated that into the makeup was through the body paint. We used an airbrush to get a softer blend and amplified the shine, because for me, the smoothness of the sashimi knife has a parallel with the precision and technical simplicity of the airbrush. It’s specialist, highly detail-oriented, yet so simple - it just cuts, it just sprays. That juxtaposition is beautiful, creating something delicate, specialist, on something as primal as flesh. We were looking at flesh as an entire vessel, approaching it with curiosity, but also with a little bit of trepidation. And you feel that in the final photo, in the way it’s shot, in the way the dish presents itself.

Tina: The raw fish, the raw makeup look, the raw use of tools, even the presence of an actual fish in the photos alongside Maria - it all comes back to this idea of stripping everything down and simply consuming it, taking it in. There’s a beautiful joy in simplicity. Yes, we’ve pared everything back in both of our crafts, but I also challenge people to do the same in their own lives. Because when you strip things down, when you let yourself reach that place of true vulnerability, the rewards, like with intimacy, are massive. Like stripping down in the middle of a forest while it rains? Small, accessible moments like that. There’s something profound in experiencing true vulnerability in isolation, in that space where you meet yourself fully.

Salonee: While working at Tuba Club in Marseille, cooking with fish brought its own layers of meaning. All the fish there is truly fresh, and in that sense, it’s seen as a luxury. To even cook with it feels like a luxury - to learn how to work with it physically, to understand the delicate process of dissecting it. That’s pure knowledge, something I can carry into anything I want to explore in the future. What struck me is how raw fish becomes almost like a canvas - you can take it in its simplest form or use it as a base to get creative, to layer on a personal touch, like I did here with a South Indian–style dressing. It's the same with makeup, right? You can create a very raw, pared-back look, but you can always customize it, personalize it, transform it. It’s this dynamic space, where simplicity can hold complexity, and the canvas can shift depending on who’s holding the brush, or the knife.

Tina: The cross-section with makeup here is the airbrush, because an airbrush isn’t exactly a common tool. It’s a specialized skill set, requiring entirely different paints and techniques. That’s the key - it’s a transferable skill. Once you know how to work with an airbrush, what you can do with it is almost limitless. That’s where the parallel with cooking comes in: when you have the knowledge, when you understand the tools, the canvas opens up.

The final look with all its drama contrasts dramatically with the first nostalgic dish. Can you explain that?

Salonee: I did a plain shrikhand with a lot of different berries. And for me, this was a very free dish that represented chaos. While I was assembling the dish, it just got more and more chaotic. At the end we were spraying the sauce everywhere. Someone was getting into the shrikhand and smearing it till it turned into a different hue of purple, and the colors were more vibrant, and it was almost tasting like freedom.

Tina: Salonee and I are two very chaotic individuals, this is where we got to play and indulge. A dessert is almost opulent. In a sense, you just want to taste it. You want to get your hands stuck in, throw yourself in the deep end. This reminded me of my favourite place to feel completely free and unapologetically experience Salonee and I’s own chaotic energy - at the club. You cannot miss this. You can’t not see this makeup. It’s got this free fun motion to it, which for me, honors our relationship as two creatives and the intersection that found us through being annoyed at some random woman. This is the kind of makeup where you can remember the music that was playing while you put it on - the kind you spend two hours perfecting before heading out to the club. It’s expressive, it’s free, it carries an innate ecstatic energy. It’s vibrant and alive. And that same energy runs through the dish. The way we explore both is unbashful and unapologetic: this is who we are, this is our culture, and this is how we express it. Whether it’s through club culture, South Asian culture, the culture of the kitchen, or the glam room, they all intersect in a unifying way that is accessible and is understandable, and it’s a language that we translate and move through.

Salonee: I also want to touch on how this translates into appearances and judgment. When Tina and I first met, from the outside you’d think, ‘these two girls look so different, no way they’d connect’. But when you strip all that back and just freely connect, the real energy flows. There’s freedom in talking to who you want, how you want, without apology. The world’s already full of judgment - you’re expected to look, act, and be a certain way, especially in specific fields. But it’s about crossing those boundaries, being unapologetically yourself. Even with dessert - what’s a dessert supposed to look like? We have all these preconceived frames, but have you really tested the limits of what’s possible?

Tina: How we present ourselves has a massive impact. And if we were to judge everything by the appearance of how they are, then we lose out on the richness and flavor of life. If everyone within your social circle has a very similar aesthetic, you're only tasting one flavor, and that in itself, can be incredibly limiting, not just to your own experience, but also your creative insights. There is a lot of flavor to be found when you start exploring other connections that might not be very prescriptive in relationships. There is a surrender in accepting those that are around you, and how we integrate with these different ideologies and accept them because they're vibing and because they taste good.

Salonee: The dish tasted great, but by the end, it became a full creative session. Everyone in the room got involved, which was such a joy to see - for instance, Ella (our photographer) added radicchio, and Tina suggested we brush the sauce a certain way. The colors transformed completely, shifting into a new shade of purple. We kept experimenting, layering ideas, and it became a really dynamic, collaborative process. In that moment, we all connected on a different level - working together seamlessly.

Tina: We have a tendency, especially in the very tense, political and late stage capitalist society that we’re in today, to take everything very seriously, and some things, yes, wholeheartedly we should, but in those moments we can take a rest from that. Rest is a radical thing, and sharing desserts with your friends, that’s a very radical gesture, and expressing your makeup as you want, and as freely and boldly as you wish is also a radical thing. And all the time, all of these things interlace with each other. As two women of color, being this free with what we do feels like a quiet rebellion — a kind of fuck you to everything that’s ever tried to box us in. That playfulness can be where great things happen, and that’s where great movements are founded upon. That’s exactly what we hope to spark - that others feel inspired to be a bit freer and more playful with their food, their makeup, their creativity. They can take this same energy, cultivate it for themselves, and share it within their own communities!

TAARA MAG ISSUE 04

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TAARA MAG
ISSUE 04