Groundhog Day may have been yesterday, but as I wryly noted to my roommate over our morning coffees, every day of the past year has felt a little like Groundhog Day. Because of it, my brain hasn’t quite yet filed 2019 as something that happened two years ago. Reminder to self: 2019 was two years ago! Which means Euphoria season 1 came out two years ago. In 2019, I was just one of many beauty writers who interviewed lead makeup artist Donni Davy about her work on the show, which arguably inspired a full year’s worth of makeup and fashion week runways. “Euphoria makeup” has since become a category of its own, dominating Instagram and Gen-Z populated Tiktok.
“Approaching the first season was so natural and so fun,” Davy told me, and though she was proud of her work she admitted that, at the time, she couldn’t have anticipated its force. I reconnected with Davy on the eve of part two of Euphoria‘s bridge special dropping on HBO Max, curious about how she planned to translate the same creative energy to new episodes. But, as Davy explained, exactly when she started feeling the heat to nail her follow up, production on season 2 came to a screeching halt. “We got the scripts last March,” Davy explained, “I was getting excited, I had all these looks for season 2 in my head, and then the plug got pulled.”
Not only has the characters’ emotional world changed a lot from where we started, but the real world has, too. There’s a lot to look forward to if you’re a Euphoria fan. There are also some really interesting forces at play behind the new looks we did get in “Trouble Don’t Last Always” and “Fuck Anyone Who’s Not A Sea Blob,”.
Quite literally bridging 2020 and 2021 are the show’s new bridge episodes, “Trouble Don’t Last Always”, which came out in December and centers on Rue, and “Fuck Anyone Who’s Not A Sea Blob”, which came out in January with a focus on Jules. As Davy tells it, creator Sam Levinson made the executive decision to write completely new episodes with pared-back plots that they’d be able to shoot during a pandemic. Rue’s hour-long episode takes place exclusively in a near-empty diner, while Jules’ features a limited cast of characters.
“The point of these two episodes was really to peel back these characters’ outer layers, including makeup and clothing, to really get into what’s going on in their headspaces,” said Davy. “I don’t think these moments would have happened if it weren’t for the pandemic, and it took us down this really cool other path.” She noted that, in retrospect, moments of rawness where the characters don’t look their best are necessary to ground the bigger makeup moments and make them more realistic. Bright shadow and rhinestones always come off at the end of the day.
While Rue’s episode featured no makeup whatsoever, Jules’ does reveal a whisper of how Davy plans to approach the next season. “Jules had a lot of flashbacks, so I actually had to match a lot of season 1 looks.” Returning to them two years later after seeing so many interpretations on Instagram forced Davy to take a fresh look at some of her most recreated moments. Its direct result? Head In The Clouds, a sheet of teeny glitter and iridescent cloud stickers that approximate the ones she hand-drew on Hunter Schafer’s face for the show. It was created in collaboration with Face Lace and its legendary makeup artist founder Phyllis Cohen—Davy relied on Face Lace appliques for holographic elements in season one (this look is the most memorable), so working with the brand on the exclusive set was a no-brainer. Not only does Jules wear the stickers in “Fuck Anyone Who’s Not A Sea Blob,” but you can also buy them for use at home.
When I tried drawing clouds on my own eyes two years ago I noted that it was actually the trickiest Euphoria look to do at home—forming the clouds with liquid liner took incredible precision, and I had to wipe my work off and start over several times before getting it right. With her Face Lace stickers, all you need to do is peel and stick. “I wanted to make something user-friendly, customizable and fun for the Euphoria makeup community,” said Davy. Ten percent of each sale goes to support Trans Lifeline, a non-profit organization that provides resources to real life kids like Jules.
While stickers are super intuitive, Davy shared a few tips to make sure you get the most out of your Euphoria Face Lace. A non-oily moisturizer keeps the decals from sliding, as will forgoing the cream eyeshadow. “The decals won’t stick very well on top of a chunky glitter or any particularly moist eyeshadow formula,” she explained, though noting that powder shadows are fine. Davy also recommended forgoing setting mist or facial spray after the decals are on, as their wetness can mess with the adhesive, or alter the shininess of the plastic material. There’s no right or wrong way to apply the clouds, and the MUA even suggests cutting them up for further customization. Once you’ve got ‘em where you want ‘em, firmly press down to secure the decals there for the whole day—“and then some, if you don’t peel them off,” Davy joked. Unfortunately, no stickers will last until season 2’s new projected air date: 2022.
—Ali Oshinsky
Photo via HBO and Donni Davy