Lying under my duvet one cold, snowy night in January 2022, I had the culture shock of the new millennium. My best friend had implored me for months to watch Euphoria, and I finally caved. Cue a total sensory overload.

When the story opens, we meet Zendaya as Rue. She paints us a picture of her cosy suburban upbringing, jilted by her drug use. At the five-minute mark, her eyes and cheeks are glistening with both tears and carefully applied shimmer. It’s truly the most beautiful make-up I’ve ever seen and, to me, it looks like wearable magic.

As Rue’s drugs take effect, the cinematography takes us on a trip with her. Filters of indigo and magenta disrupt every hazy turn of her head, and low lights make her face twinkle more than Taylor Swift’s Eras tour wardrobe. I finally understood why my For You page on TikTok was awash with Euphoria-inspired make-up; everybody was recreating this moment. Luckily for me, the small upside of being late to the party is that I was able to spend two solid days watching season one back-to-back.

As the final credits rolled, I knew I had to find out who was behind the make-up that I loved so much. After doing some digging, I discovered Donni Davy, the make-up head and department lead on the show.

The changing face of beauty

To set the scene, Euphoria premiered at the tail end of the 2010s. The beauty landscape at the time was one of symmetry and perfection: think Kim Kardashian, Mario Dedivanovic and the seismic rise of YouTube tutorials. Creators reinforced polished make-up techniques, including how to contour, sculpt eyebrows and apply false lashes. I still have tremendous respect for this era because it was the time we were all able to become masters of our own make-up from the comfort of our bedrooms. But a new dawn was upon us, and for me, a trained make-up artist and beauty obsessive, it felt a lot more freeing.

Looking back, it seems like an entire generation changed its make-up aesthetic when Euphoria aired. “The 2010s were dominated by thick foundation, layers of concealer and ‘baking’ products – all designed to blanket the skin,” Lisa Payne, head of beauty at trend forecasting agency Stylus, tells Stylist. “But Euphoria sent sales of glitter sky-high and searches for ‘crystal eye make-up’ were up 110% year on year by 2022.”

Desperate to understand this vision I felt so connected to, I set out to get to know the woman behind these incredible make-up looks that have forever changed the beauty landscape.

The magic maker

“Euphoria didn’t start right out of the gate with me knowing that these make-up looks would be really bright colours,” Davy tells me over Zoom, as we both sit in our comfy clothes one Tuesday evening. She’s lit by the warm pink glow of her make-up room in LA, and I’m curled up with my two cats in Birmingham. “The director, Sam Levinson, and I wanted to explore what it could mean to showcase make-up on TV as a means for self-expression. After we shot the pilot episode, I realised how shadowy the scenes were. Even small little things I did with the make-up weren’t really visible.”

“There’s this magical moment when Rue is walking through a party in the pilot episode,” she says, referencing the very make-up that I was first drawn to. “The glitter was popping, and I just thought the way it was twinkling on camera was so emotional. I was like, more of that! Other characters had eyeliner, or maybe just some eyeshadow on, but we needed to get it past that point where it just looked like regular make-up, so I set out to make it more special. [The make-up became] part of the story and not just arbitrarily there. It had to fit in with the scene, the colour, the mood and the vibe [of the show].”

Davy goes on to talk about how the make-up took on a life of its own on the show. It blossomed into something bigger than anyone could ever have expected. “The biggest takeaway of that was that it felt like the beauty industry needed it to happen. People seemed hungry for it, and they were very eager to take it on and recreate it in their own way. It was like it was helping to shake off all the dust of the Kardashian-inspired looks.” 

Life before Euphoria (and discovering a love of facial embellishments)

Davy’s obsession with sparkles didn’t start with Euphoria. “I used rhinestones and glitter on an A24 film called Under The Silver Lake,” she explains. A24 is known for its independent films and TV shows and came to be a poignant creative partner for Davy: it’s now the parent company for her own make-up endeavours.

“It stars Andrew Garfield and he has all of these wild female characters around him. That was the birth of Euphoria make-up. I got the job to come and interview for Euphoria based on my work on that. It’s a goldmine of cool looks and make-up moments,” Davy says.

“One of the reasons why that movie appealed to me is that I really grappled in terms of my own ethics with being a make-up artist and making people look prettier,” she says. “Simply being a make-up artist, to make someone look the best version of themselves, was – morally – something I really had problems with. When I found the right projects – Under The Silver Lake, Euphoria – where I got to make characters feel gritty but have these interesting looks at the same time, that was when it all clicked for me.”

Later, Davy tells me she’s passionate about undoing the problematic, antiquated rules that exist in the beauty industry. “It pisses me off when people are told they can’t wear a certain style of make-up because they’re older, or because they have hooded eyes,” she says. “I want to help people unlearn this system, there’s a lot more to do bit my entry point to that was with glitter and rhinestones.”

Making the magic happen

As a direct result of the emotional connection that people had to Euphoria’s make-up, Davy joined forces with her A24 peers to create her own brand, Half Magic Beauty. Named because the brand’s make-up is designed to be half of the magic; you – the wearer – are the other half.

Davy tells me that other brands were approaching her, but it didn’t feel right that they would be the ones to capitalise on her creativity, so instead she remained steadfast in her patience until the right opportunity came along. “I was working on a show called The Underground Railroad, set in the 1800s, and it has a really traumatising, terrible subject matter. The make-up I was doing on that was unspeakable, it’s almost too scarring to talk about on a platform like TikTok [without being censored]” she recalls.

“That was the world I was living in as the Euphoria make-up was blowing up. Then the creative producers at A24 called and asked if I wanted to do a make-up line with them. They were so supportive and in that moment my life changed overnight. I knew what I would do, that I would grab it by the balls and that it would get my full attention. It was calm and surreal, a realisation that ‘OK, I’m going to do this. I’m going to build the most amazing brand I could ever imagine.’”

And that’s exactly what happened. Half Magic launched in May 2022 and it’s been flying off the shelves ever since. It also probably comes as no surprise to hear that I fell hook, line and sinker for each and every product, and – after begging the team to let me – I was able to visit its head office in LA earlier this year. Being able to meet Donni and everybody else behind the brand that I loved so much was such a special experience for me; I’ll forever remember how easy the conversation was as we shared banana pudding in West Hollywood’s Magnolia Bakery.

More than make-up

To tell you the truth, I found Donni when I was heartbroken. At the time of watching Euphoria, all I wanted was a distraction, and she was able to lead me down a glittery rabbit hole at exactly the right time. Her superpower is igniting escapism, and I felt reincarnated when I was recreating her joyous, colourful make-up looks.

Donni, thank you for helping me to find the magic in myself when I was sure there was none left.

Images: Rose Gallagher, Half Magic Beauty