For Ernesto Casillas, eyes are where he goes for impact. The longtime celebrity makeup artist has had a season of internet breaking beauty moments—from Zara Larsson’s rosy lids at Billboard’s Women in Music event in April to the white and blue washes on Zendaya’s rounds of press for The Odyssey and Spiderman: Brand New Day.
But what a quick scroll through the artist’s Instagram doesn’t show you is his hectic schedule (when chatting with Allure, Casillas was coming off of eight weeks of travel, except for a few hours in his native Los Angeles) and what a slow build it’s been to those viral red carpet moments. If you weren’t familiar with Casillas before Zendaya walked out with flushed cheeks and barely a whisper of eye makeup on July 14, you are now. The makeup artist’s DMs were flooded immediately after The Odyssey premiere in New York City with people begging for the tutorial and product breakdown, while hundreds of beauty lovers tagged him in their recreations of the look.
It was an overnight success, although it was years in the making. Casillas has followed the same creative process for years. Citing Zendaya’s dress, designed by Matières Fécales, the look came about in similar ways to his past work with Zendaya, with little outside inspiration needed. “I was thinking of beautiful, sunkissed, bronzy skin,” he explains. “I knew that she was going to wear a lot of white, so I started thinking about how to incorporate color in order to break that up.” Typically, he consults with both Zendaya and her longtime stylist Law Roach on the day of, and they flesh out the vision for the look. “We have a dress, and we all have a similar vision. It’s been about beautiful, bronzy skin, and if she’s wearing a blue sapphire necklace, maybe we’ll use a pot of blue eyeshadow, just for a pop of color.”
While the film was set in mythical ancient Greece, Casillas didn’t need to look there for inspiration. “At the end of the day, we’re doing makeup for the carpet, not for the film,” he says. “We want to create a moment on the carpet that is both a fashion and a beauty moment, for sure.”
Casillas’ journey with makeup started in a Costco, flipping through Kevyn Aucoin’s books sold at the big box retailer. “Seeing those transformations really had an impact on me,” he remembers. His upbringing and heritage also formed his tastes. “Coming from a Mexican background, there was a really big emphasis on pageant culture, telenovelas, and glamour. So, through college, my goal was to become a beauty and fashion photographer, but I fell in love with makeup. I was doing the makeup for the models, who were my friends, and I decided I wanted to pursue makeup over photography.”
Casillas also grew up in Los Angeles in the early 2000s.” Hollywood was my playground, and basically my backyard,” he quips, and much of his work harkens back to that period, albeit with a twist.
“Fashion [back then] was very dark, smoky eyes, barely-there brows, a lot of contour. I was very into that but at the same time, I had that touch of glamour to me,” Casillas says. Eventually, he was able to find his own take on the styles he grew up admiring. “I put a lot of emphasis on fashion and editorial with very clean makeup, clean skin, an interesting eye. But if I wanted to work with celebrities, they want the glam, they want the beat. That’s where the money is, too. I started leaning into it more because I thought I had to be more fashion and clean and editorial, but I realized there was a market for full glam.”
