11 cult makeup products by people who know best

I am going to cheat with Mario and give him two spots. I make the rules here and, more importantly, I cannot choose. First: the F4.

If you’ve ever wondered why your foundation looks like foundation while Mario Dedivanovic’s clients look as though they were simply born with very expensive skin, a suspicious amount of the answer may be in the brush.

The dual-ended F4 has become one of those quietly cult beauty tools that makeup people talk about with the fervour usually reserved for discontinued lipsticks. One end buffs and diffuses, the other gets into the smaller contours of the face. Foundation, concealer, cream blush, contour—it somehow makes all of them look less like makeup.

See? Cheating.

Mario’s Ethereal Eyes palette is essentially what happens when someone understands that most of us want our eyeshadow to look beautiful, not necessarily like we spent three semesters studying colour theory.

The mattes are soft, beautifully calibrated neutrals, but the reason this palette earned its cult status is those almost wet-looking, twinkly toppers. They catch the light without tipping into craft-store glitter and make an extremely basic brown eye suddenly look like you have somewhere much more interesting to be.

It was originally limited-edition, disappeared, caused the predictable beauty-internet mourning period, and eventually returned. As it should have.

Patrick Ta understood something fundamental about blush: one is simply not enough.

Each compact pairs a cream with a corresponding powder, designed to be layered for the glossy, dimensional cheek that has become practically synonymous with his work. And yes, the famous Patrick Ta method involves putting the cream over the powder—which sounds mildly illegal until you try it.

The result is not “I applied blush”. It is “I have excellent circulation, sleep nine hours a night and perhaps just received a flattering text”.

There are many blushes in the world. There are very few that have created their own application technique.

It feels impossible to talk about Mary Phillips without talking about underpainting—the technique she helped turn from an old-school makeup-artist trick into a TikTok obsession.

Instead of aggressively contouring over your foundation and then attempting to blend away the evidence, you sculpt underneath your base. The effect is softer, more dimensional, and far less “I have drawn two brown motorway lanes beneath my cheekbones”.

Her cream palette essentially puts the entire technique into one compact: highlight, contour, sculpt, blend, pretend your bone structure has always been this cooperative.

This is not a delicate little facial mist. This is hairspray for your face, and we’re saying this with enormous affection.

Patrick Starrr built One/Size around unapologetic, high-performance makeup, and On ’Til Dawn may be the brand’s most famous overachiever. The aerosol mist is designed to lock makeup down, control shine, and withstand the sort of conditions under which foundation usually begins quietly packing its bags.

Humidity? Dancing? A 12-hour wedding? Mumbai in May? Good luck to all of them. If your makeup tends to disappear before you do, this is the insurance policy.

Trying to explain the texture of this product makes you sound slightly unwell. It is a balm. Except it behaves like a powder. Except it can work as your base. Or your primer. Or something in between. Just trust Danessa.

The Yummy skin blurring balm powder has become one of the defining products of Danessa Myricks Beauty because it tackles the things real people actually complain about: visible texture, pores and shine, without turning the face into a flat matte mask.

It blurs, lightly perfects, and somehow still allows skin to look like skin. Makeup witchcraft, essentially.

Calling Pat McGrath a makeup artist almost feels inadequate. This is Dame Pat McGrath—the woman responsible for enough legendary runway beauty moments to fill several fashion-history books.

And the Mothership palettes are appropriately excessive.

The special shades are the reason you buy one: metallics, multidimensional shimmers, and pigments that seem to contain several colours depending on where the light hits them. This isn’t the palette I would recommend for quietly applying taupe before a Zoom call. It is the palette I would recommend if you want someone to interrupt dinner to ask what is on your eyes.

Beauty as spectacle. Mother would approve.

Before “quiet luxury” colonised our vocabulary, Gucci Westman was already making quiet-luxury makeup.

Baby Cheeks is the anti-blush blush: creamy, beautifully sheer, extremely difficult to mess up and designed to create the kind of flush that looks as though it belongs to your face rather than sitting on top of it. Swipe. Tap with fingers. Done.

Petal remains a classic for good reason, but the entire appeal of Baby Cheeks is its complete lack of drama—which, ironically, is exactly why makeup artists love products like this.

Lisa Eldridge has spent decades making famous women look like extraordinarily good versions of themselves rather than entirely different people, so naturally her skin tint does the same thing.

The Seamless skin enhancing tint is watery, featherlight, and almost suspiciously good at evening things out without leaving behind obvious evidence. Redness is softened, tone looks more uniform, skin remains skin.

It’s the complexion equivalent of editing a photograph just enough that everyone comments on how good the lighting was.

We cannot discuss makeup artists building brands without looking closer to home.

Celebrity makeup artist Namrata Soni founded Simply Nam with products designed specifically with Indian women, skin tones, and climate in mind—and the Velvet Magic cream blush has become one of the line’s signatures.

It’s creamy, buildable, and refreshingly uncomplicated: tap it onto cheeks, blend, and suddenly the face looks alive again. The rosy Partner in Crime is particularly easy to wear, while the shade Range has been designed with Indian complexions in mind.

Also, any blush that can survive an Indian wedding deserves independent scientific study.

Yes, I know I promised ten. Apparently, makeup artists cannot be contained by arbitrary list lengths.

Sandhya Shekar—whose brushes have worked on some of the most photographed faces in India—co-founded Mokae around a distinctly Indian idea of high-performance, clean beauty.

My pick is Witching Hour, the tinted brow gel designed to fill, lift and sculpt in one step. The genius is that it gives brows presence without immediately announcing brow product has been applied here. Brush it through, build where necessary, and move on with your life.

For anyone who wants fluffy, groomed, subtly filled-in brows without performing a 12-step architectural drawing every morning, this is the one.