Thirty weeks.
When we started Makeup Live I genuinely didn’t know if anyone was still going live. Nobody in this industry seemed to be doing it, other than Danessa and her team. We just wanted somewhere to talk about makeup with people who love makeup, once a week, no script.
Thirty weeks later there were over 200 of you in the chat at once. France, Germany, India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Brazil, Poland, Canada, Texas, Glasgow, Cardiff, Leeds, and someone joining for the first time from Mongolia. That still knocks me sideways.
So to mark the big 30 we went live three times in one day. Contour and complexion at 12. Timeless makeup for 60+ at 2. Editorial graphic liner at 4. Three hours of makeup, three completely different briefs, and a studio that looked like a bomb had gone off by the end of it.
Here’s what happened, and the one technique from each I’d want you to take away.
Live One, 12pm: Contoured Beauty with Ava
The brief was a proper beat. Sculpted, contoured, pushed further than I’d normally take a base, with a bit of a 90s Janet Jackson feel to it. For me she’s one of the all time complexion queens, that seamless, super-blended skin.
I kept the product list short on purpose, because this look isn’t about product. It’s about shape. Rare Beauty foundation in two shades mixed, NARS Radiant Creamy Concealer, Huda Beauty Easy Bake in Peach Pie, and a bronzer I’m still trying to replace.
The technique: cream first, powder second, and map before you place.
Before anything went on, I took a minute just to read Ava’s skin. She’s much richer through the forehead and much fairer through the centre of the face, with a real amber undertone on the perimeter and pure gold in the middle. So I mixed shade 26 and shade 40 and I went in with my deeper tone first, around the perimeter, mapping out where I wanted shadow to live. Then I placed the light. The contrast is already there in the skin. Your job is to exaggerate what’s there, not draw on something new.
Everything structural went down in cream, with the 173 - MY CREAM CONTOUR, before a single grain of powder. Creams are malleable. You can push them, move them, change your mind. Powder is the thing you finish with, once you’re happy.
And a note on powder, because people are frightened of it. I’m not. Powder makes this kind of look. But powder over dry skin is a hard no. Prep the skin properly first and it will never look cakey.
The moment: the hairline.
The 173 is the brush people are most intimidated by. It’s big. When we launched it the comments were all “I’d never reach for that.” Sofia in the chat owns three.
Here’s why it’s that size. You don’t blend side to side with it. You place it, once, and let the fibres do the blending. The angle hooks the cheekbone and finds the bone for you. And then there’s the bit I care about most: I push it back into the hairline. One of my absolute worst things in a contoured face is that little strip of bare skin between where the makeup stops and the hair starts. It’s the dead giveaway. The 173 is dense enough to get in between the baby hairs and take the colour right up, so the edge disappears.
Same brush, same session: down the jaw and underneath it, from the inner corner of the eye and up through the nose, and back into the temple. It does about half the job for you.
Also worth stealing: the 172 gives you two finishes depending on which end you land. Flat, dense, short end to carve the cheek. Longer tapered end to polish everything together and take the harshness off a bake. And I finished the whole face with One/Size Powder Melt, which does exactly what it says and pushes all that powder back into the skin so it reads as real again.
Live Two, 2pm: Timeless Beauty, 60+ with Chris
This is the segment we get asked for more than anything else, and the chat proved it. “I don’t know why everyone focuses on 20s and 30s, us older folks still count.” “I’m 65 in Toronto and this is perfect.” “We don’t get enough of this.”
Chris is Alex’s mum and my mother-in-law, and I’ve done her makeup a hundred times. She wears makeup every single day, she won’t do the garden without it, and she’s completely au naturel, no work done at all. She’s also, for the record, 70 plus. We called it 60+ and got politely corrected in the chat.
My whole approach to more mature skin came from the MAC counter, honestly. You have no idea who’s sitting in your chair that day, what their skin does, what age they are, what they’re worried about. That was makeup school for me.
The technique: press, don’t sweep.
This is the single most useful thing from the whole hour. On skin with any texture, fine lines or open pores, a side to side motion drags product into the lines and you get that little polka dot effect where it gathers. So everything I did on Chris was a press or a bounce.
Cushion foundation bounced on with the 106, whose white bristles work around the fine lines rather than into them. Concealer pressed in with the 181 - MY DOMED MULTI. Powder pressed in with the same brush, moving the skin gently as it sets so it lands smoothly instead of sitting on top. The 181 is the brush I reached for in all three lives and it’s earned it.
Everything before that was prep, and prep is the whole ball game here. Exfoliate first, with a cotton pad all over and a big cotton bud for the stubborn bits around the nostrils. Then a light, water-based hydrator rather than anything rich, a bit of massage to shift puffiness and lift the features, and a primer through the centre of the face only. I was after a cashmere finish. Not dewy, not matte, somewhere in between, softly lit.
One product I’ll shout about: Erborian CC Red Correct. I’ve had a love-hate thing with colour correctors for years because most of them knock all the life out of the skin and leave you looking like a cadaver. This one calms the redness and leaves real skin behind. Placed only on the high points with the 181, never buffed all over.
The moment: black liner.
Somebody asked whether you should stick to lighter colours on a mature eye. No. Absolutely not.
Dark colours give you the illusion of lift. Get a properly black, properly precise liner right into the root of the lash, tightline the upper waterline, and then instead of building a big crease line, smoke around the outer corner and wrap it underneath. That wrap is where the whole look happens. It creates depth and it hides any softness in the skin at the corner without you doing any of that heavy crease work that, honestly, can read a bit dated.
I used the 243 - MY TAPERED CREASE for it, because the point lets you see exactly what you’re doing. You can’t do detail work with a brush that’s covering the area you’re trying to look at.
We finished with a lip liner two millimetres above her natural line, smoothed out with the 503, which I originally designed for lips and which fills in any of the feathering. Chris said lipstick is her favourite thing in makeup, so that was never going to be an afterthought.
Live Three, 4pm: Editorial, Graphic Liner with Ava
Last one of the day and we kept the complexion from the 12pm live because we were still loving it. This one was pure play.
Graphic liner is the thing I live for, and it’s the reason MYKITCO exists in the first place. When I started out I used to dissect the looks in magazines trying to work out how they’d taken a shadow from intense to nothing, what tools they’d used, how the line was so clean. I couldn’t find brushes that did it. So I made them.
The technique: sketch it in brown before you commit to black.
Everyone wants to go straight in with the black and that’s where it goes wrong. I mapped the entire shape first with the 223 - MY FLUFFY BLENDER and a warm brown from the Anastasia contour kit, starting at the inner corner, which is the bit everyone forgets. That’s my groundwork. It’s a sketch. If it’s wrong, nobody will ever know.
Then the 243 goes in with black, and here’s the part that matters: I use it like a pencil. Only the very tip touches the skin. Barely any pressure. None of the bristles should move except the point. I obsess over that. A tapered brush that loses its taper is useless, and getting one to hold that shape forever was the hardest conversation I’ve ever had with a manufacturer.
Two brushes, same taper, different scale. The 243 for the precise line. The larger tapered blender for a softer version of the same shape. They work in harmony.
The moment: one stroke.
The wing went on with the 261 - MY LONG LINER, in one continuous pull, and the room genuinely gasped. Becca was on the edge of her seat. I’ve been called a magician, which we’ve now upgraded to magicianry.
It looks harder than it is, and I’ll be honest about why it works. The brush is long, so when you place it, the fibre bends to the contour of the eye. It’s designed to do that. Hold it like a pen, lay the long end down first, and let the flex paint the line rather than forcing it. Steady hand not included.
Positioning: the floating line wants to sit just above the natural crease, so that when the eye opens you can still see it. The mistake I see most is people closing the eye off and bringing that point too far down at the start. Think long. Think open. Think stretching the eye out.
Then the gold. Mehron metallic gold powder mixed with Mehron mixing liquid is, for me, the only true editorial gold. I’ve tried them all. Painted on with the 220 - MY PRECISE BLENDER, which is synthetic, so it holds the shimmer inside the bristles instead of flicking it everywhere. Gold on the eye, gold wrapped underneath, and gold on the lip in the end because the chat asked for it.
And the thing I most want you to take from this one: removal is as important as application. I changed that liner three times. I squared off the inner corner halfway through because it looked better. Everything is fixable with a bud and a bit of micellar water. I’ve been on jobs and thought “I do not like this makeup”, and everyone has. The answer isn’t to panic or go home sad about it, it’s to take it off and do something else. Give yourself permission to play.
Thank you
Three giveaways went out across the day: the Complexion Edit at 12, the Eye & Detail Edit at 2 and 4. Congratulations to Fiona, Tash, Ash, Marina, Trixie and Rachel.
Thirty weeks of this and it keeps getting better. We’ve done age, diversity, graphic, bridal, beauty. Tell us what you want to see next, in the chat or in the DMs, and we’ll do our best to get to it.
Makeup Live is back next Thursday at 12 noon UK time. Note the new time.
And if you’re in Manchester this Saturday, we’re walking in Manchester Pride. Liverpool Road, 11am, before 11.30 because the parade sets off at 12. Look for the Land Rover and some extremely loud signage. The brand was founded by LGBTQ+ people and with safe spaces shrinking it feels more important than ever to be out and loud about it. Come and walk with us.
MY BIG SUMMER SALE is on until Wednesday, including both limited edition brush edits.
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