Donni Davy’s Secrets on How Chappell Roan’s Coachella Makeup Look Came to Be

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Donni Davy, best known for creating the acid-melting, star twinkling makeup looks on HBO’s Euphoria, hates doing makeup for people who already know how to do their makeup. It makes her nervous, she says, doing someone’s makeup “when they themselves are pretty nerdy about makeup.” And yet, she slid into the DMs of a budding gay popstar and makeup enthusiast anyway. Chappell Roan’s Coachella makeup became an instant classic.

Chappell Roan isn’t shy to post videos of her off-stage persona—a clean face, a messy ponytail, and a T-shirt—whom her fans lovingly refer to by her birth name, Kayleigh. But when she switches into Chappell Roan, she’s wearing a full face of makeup, from the clown white to face gems and painted cheeks. Her makeup takes a lot of tips from drag artists, and she’s pretty clear about honoring that—the music video for her single, “Pink Pony Club,” features two legendary queens, Porkchop and Meatball. That, plus she invites a local drag queen to perform in the cities she tours. Her show is a drag show. So what got Donni Davy, who specializes in very intimate close-camera television makeup, to branch out into stage makeup, and onto one of the biggest stages in the world at that?

“I just love the backstory,” Davy tells StyleCaster, describing how the stage persona Chappell has built feels similar to characters in a television show. “I love the whole picture, the outfit, the vibe, the hair, everything. I love the whole story.”

And because of that, Davy went big with her makeup look so that details she’s used to showing a camera centimeters away from an actor’s face could be seen from the crowd. She extended the whites of her eye about a quarter inch lower, she said, drawing a fake lash line underneath the bottom eyelid. Davy said, even while standing far back during Chappell’s set, she could see the gems glittering under her eyes, which was the exact effect she wanted not to lose. “I wanted her eyes to read almost like cartoon eyes, I wanted everything really visible. So I went way bigger and bolder than I usually do. So I feel like people actually got to see the real look and all the details of it because I went so heavy.”

Chappell’s band—Lucy Ritter on the drums, Valeria Falcón on the bass, and Eliza Petrosyan on guitar—also had coordinated looks. Davy took inspiration for the overall look from Boy George and the 1980s punk scene and Vivienne Westwood. Chappell got the drag treatment, and she then designed the rest of the band’s looks around that. The band’s makeup was executed by artists Alexandra French and Josalyn Andromeda.

But there’s a lot for which Davy just straight up gives credit to Chappell. As I’m asking questions and describing the singer’s look and persona, Davy can’t help but interject, calling her “refreshing,” and “inspiring,” and “cool.” At one point, she even says of the overall effect of the look, “The white painted face lets you do that.” The white-painted face is Chappell’s signature, whereas Donni Davy is used to working with directors who prefer skin-like, no-makeup appearances. But that challenge is what drew her to Chappell Roan in the first place.

She actually called it a challenge, which most pros at her level rarely admit to hunting for. She doesn’t consider herself an expert at theater makeup or drag makeup, so Chappell Roan’s Coachella look was “actually a really hard look for me to execute, which is part of the reason why I wanted to do it. I knew I should do it. I knew I could make her look amazing, but I also knew I would learn a lot.”

There’s also the fact that Chappell Roan is a fan of Half Magic, the makeup brand Donni Davy founded between working on seasons 1 and 2 of Euphoria. The concept of Euphoria makeup exploded overnight, before Davy could predict that people would care about the show the way that they do. Through her makeup for that show, she created a mainstream trend of young people wearing playful makeup without apology or disclaimer. So the work she’s most known for, Euphoria makeup, is one of the biggest trends we’ve seen in beauty in years. But when the idea of trends comes up, bless her, Davy visibly winces while trying to give a polite interview answer about it. I asked her if she even liked the concept of trends, and she immediately relaxes. “No, I don’t,” she says. “I get asked so often from different beauty publications to talk about trends, just to weigh in. Honestly, I’m so flattered to be asked, to be considered a thought leader in the beauty community, and like, happy to talk about it, but trends are not on my radar.”

In lieu of trends, her direction to those wanting to play with makeup is to do just that—play. Go without parameters, experiment. That’s how new things are created, she says.