Meet the celebrity make-up artists who are social media stars in their own right

Social media has been responsible for taking a number of industries out of the shadows and giving them a platform that puts them centre stage.

This is especially true for celebrity make-up artists, who share their images of red carpet looks, behind-the-scenes of photoshoots, and shows people how to recreate their favourite star’s look themselves.

It’s catapulted the likes of career make-up artists such as Pati Dubroff, Jo Baker and Daniel Martin into the mainstream, turning them into brand ambassadors and founders of their own cosmetics ranges.

Dubroff – famous for making up faces such as Aussies Margot Robbie and Shanina Shaik, as well as Kirsten Dunst and Priyanka Chopra – has amassed more than half a million followers across Instagram and TikTok, which has led to working with a number of big name brands like Chanel among them.

“Margot’s very loved,” the 58-year-old artist tells nine.com.au.

“So when we’re in the Wuthering Heights and the blushing it up of it all, or making the world more pink, the Barbie of it all, there’s a lot of a lot more attention for sure.

“The affiliation with Chanel obviously makes for more eyes [on you] and depending on which celebrity you’re working with at the time also makes for a lot of eyes [on you], and depending on what kind of projects you’re involved with, if maybe there’s viral moments associated with that – like Sofia Richie’s wedding, that showed me very clearly, in real time, what viral moments looked like.”

For Baker – who was most recently in Sydney with Daisy Edgar-Jones for the press tour of the latest adaptation of Jane Austen’s Sense & Sensibility – her make-up career actually started in Australia in 1997, when she was 17, on a gap year, and working for the now defunct cosmetic brand Red Earth.

The now 46-year-old mum, eventually moved to LA about 20 years ago and has become one of Hollywood’s top make-up artists, working with the likes of Olivia Wilde, Kristen Wiig, Kerri Russell and Victoria Beckham.

Baker recalls jumping on this “new app” called Instagram in the mid-noughties after a friend recommended it, and thought it was a bit of fun sharing her art into the void. She unexpectedly built an online following.

But it was while sharing her tips for getting the best ’60s style full volume lashes in an interview that Baker realised the number of products and price points of what she was using was beyond the reach of most people.

Spotting a gap in the market for a perfect go-to mascara for those looking for extra lush lashes, led to Baker launching her own line of cosmetics, Bakeup Beauty.

“I was like, ‘Well, I first of all curl it with this, and then this Japanese curler, then I use a Lancôme priming base, then I use this $83 mascara from Paris, then I do like a special lash separation...’ and I felt so obnoxious, and I was like, ‘How is the average person supposed to try and get the same look for themselves? This is costing like $150. This isn’t cool,’” Baker tells nine.com.au.

“And I was like, ‘There’s got to be a way of me making a mascara that does all those things that are my signature look, but without the price tag. There’s got to be a way, I’ve got to roll all those things into one product’.

“So TarantuLash was born off of me wanting to make my signature lashes, one, affordable, and two, a very straightforward, single-step application process to getting a long-wearing, feel-good, flexible to touch, beefy, no-nonsense, full-volume natural mascara. That was how that came to life.”

Martin, who has been in the make-up world for more than 25 years, followed his passion after a life-changing moment on September 11, 2001.

“I haven’t spoken publicly a lot about this, but I was in one of the towers when the plane hit, and I was teaching a make-up class,” Martin tells nine.com.au.

Then 28, he and the class all made it out in time and were over at the Aveda Institute in SoHo when they saw the towers come down, something Martin labels “a turning point for me”.

"It was just that moment that I realised, 'Okay, I moved to New York to pursue this dream, and I need to do it'," he recalls.

“So it was just taking that leap of faith and then I started assisting again, and it just kind of snowballed.”

Fast-forward a decade and his friend, the former Condé Nast editor Eva Chen, convinced Martin to join Instagram when she started working for the company and even helped secure his “common everyday name” for his handle.

But it was several years later when Martin became somewhat of an overnight sensation on social media, after doing the “wedding make-up of a friend”.

That friend of his was none other than royal bride Meghan Markle, who wed Prince Harry in a 2018 ceremony watched by millions across the globe.

"I went from I think 17,000 followers to 70,000 in 24 hours, and then I shut my phone off," Martin tells nine.com.au.

“I mean, I stepped away from Instagram for a week because I was like, ‘Okay, this is too much’.

“At that time, I was just posting as I went, it wasn’t like I was trying to build a following. I was trying to utilise Instagram as another tool and then all of a sudden, that happened, and it really freaked me out because then I was like, ‘Okay, so that’s 70,000 eyeballs that are now looking at my stuff’ that I don’t feel comfortable with.”

Martin, who became friends with the former actress when she worked on Suits, has since embraced his newfound fame.

He even made appearances on the Duchess of Sussex’s lifestyle show With Love, Meghan as well as being seen in the Netflix docuseries Harry & Meghan.

Dark side of social media

The 53-year-old, who has also worked with the likes of Maggie Gyllenhaal and Gemma Chan among other big names, agrees the royal connection has been both a blessing and a curse when it comes to the darker side of social media.

“Oh gosh yes, yeah,” Martin, who now has 175,000 followers across social media, tells nine.com.au of experiencing negative things online.

“I always think about ‘this person’s behind a machine, and is this person real?’ because if I don’t answer, if I don’t pay it any mind, then it’s not truly affecting me.”

Martin says he’s also set up things in his account to protect himself to a degree and reduce the bot backlash.

“I do on my socials, have that you can’t comment unless you follow me, so I think that helps,” he tells nine.com.au.

Similarly, Baker, 46, and Dubroff, 58, have both experienced the darker side of their newfound fame but in very different ways.

Baker tells nine.com.au that as a result of cancel culture, she’s gotten selective about which clients she will and won’t post about.

“I always say Instagram’s my office, I’m there to do what I love, speak about what I love, and then dip out, I don’t want to be political,” Baker, who has amassed more than 312,000 followers across TikTok and Instagram, says.

“But some of my clients who are very political, when I post them, the backlash in the comments of me just working with them because they have a political point of view has been wild. Wild!

“I’ll get comments saying, ‘Unfollow, loved you as a makeup artist, but not any more’, ‘can’t believe you’re working with this person’. And so people are really like quite cutthroat when they have these deep personal beliefs or points of view.

“I’m just there to do makeup ... so that’s the part of social media I really try and protect myself from.

“It’s made me very cautious. I don’t change who I work with, it’s made me conscious of sharing who I work with.”

While for Dubroff, the security side of social media is the part that’s keeping her on her toes.

“It used to be that the hair and make-up team could go and kind of scope things out before a celebrity leaves the building, to see what’s going on outside the building, and now it’s kind of shifted in that the fans for the celebrity are also aware of the people in the celebrity’s circle,” she tells nine.com.au of being recognised by fans.

“So when they see the people from the circle, it gives them a clue that their celebrity’s nearby. So it used to be that we could kind of help kind of help more quietly, and now you’re kind of dragged into the known circle.”

Now, as a result, Dubroff says she won’t “share exactly where I am when I’m travelling with someone famous, because people use all that as information”.

“I can never say what hotel I’m at or post a picture of something cute inside of a particular hotel, because the sleuths are going to figure out that that’s maybe where we’re all staying,” she says.

Stepping into the spotlight

Being in the forefront and in front of the camera in an industry that’s traditionally considered behind-the-scenes, has been daunting they say.

“It’s totally intimidating,” Martin tells nine.com.au, adding with a laugh, “I’m a middle-aged man – how am I supposed to tell people how to do their make-up.

“I think it’s different when someone’s doing it on themselves, so the viewer can watch them, but for me to explain and share without that visual context, I think it’s different.”

For Dubroff, being in front of the camera started as a way to kill time during the pandemic.

“I think it is nice to be able to kind of be more of a front-facing expert in something that you are passionate about or do very well,” she says.

“For me, it wasn’t a conscious decision to step into the social media world for my career. It really came alongside the pandemic.”

Following her videos during that time, Dubroff started to gain a bigger following and “was kind of flabbergasted” when she started becoming recognised by “women in airports” or while travelling internationally.

“These were strangers that were responding to what I thought was just funny games,” she says.

“And then thanking me for what they feel is authenticity and the permission to age gracefully, kind of who I am, that I’m not trying to push on anyone but I guess it registers.”

‘I don’t want to overthink it’

The pressure to keep up after building such large audiences can be real but all three of these make-up artists have navigated the balance that works for them.

“I’m pretty spontaneous, and I don’t over post on my feed,” Dubroff tells nine.com.au.

“I like [Instagram] Stories and I like the freedom to be as me as I like, whether I’m like posting something that looks like a UFO or my favourite new perfume that just arrived, I don’t want to overthink it.”

But that isn’t as easy as it sounds, the 58-year-old admits.

“It is a drag, and I got to keep myself in check with it,” Dubroff admits.

“The Brick really, really helped me because what would happen was, if I’m not sleeping well, I’d have the phone next to me and I’d glance at what time it is, then I’d notice that there’s a bunch of messages and then next thing I knew, it’s 3am and I’m looking at my Instagram messages and then scrolling Instagram.

“So I had to stop that and so I got this thing called a Brick, and I highly recommend it.”

The device turns Dubroff’s social media off for 12 hours from 8pm to 8am and she’s found it game-changing.

For Baker, it’s been less about the physical pressures of scrolling on social media but the mental toll of keeping up her posts after becoming a mum four years ago.

“There was a real, almost like a grief, that I went through where I felt this incredible anxiety to post as soon as I’d finish my client, because that’s what I used to do,” she admits.

“I’d go home, I’d edit the video, I’d put the BTS [behind-the-scenes] up, and I’d have it up before everyone else saw it ... and I just wasn’t able to do that anymore once I had a baby.

“So that was a bit of a challenge, first of all, to try and reconcile that in my brain of, ‘you got to kind of let go of that immediacy of what you were doing before, because you just aren’t able’.

“If you’re going to be a good mum as well, you actually can’t do and live on social media the way you used to live. You just can’t give it that priority anymore, which was really hard because I love doing it.

“So that was a bummer to try and let go of that, and that’s actually had to be quite a mental journey for me to be like, ‘if they get it in two days, they’re going to get it in two days. If it doesn’t go viral, it doesn’t go viral. If it doesn’t hit big, it doesn’t hit big. This is all I can actually handle with my new role being a mum’. So that was a real transition.”

Inspiring the next generation

But the trio all agree that now, thanks to social media, there’s a trove of education and information they never had available to them while growing up.

So if they’re able to inspire any future make-up artists by sharing details of their craft and passion, they’re thrilled.

“For everyone that’s looking, there’s someone that’s answering, and maybe there’s many voices answering,” Dubroff, a New Jersey native who moved to NYC in the ’80s to follow her career aspirations, tells nine.com.au.

“The child in me who was dreaming of being a make-up artist and didn’t know that was a career and didn’t know how to find make-up in any way other than at a department store, that child was desperate for education and information.

“I would have loved spending all my hours on YouTube and TikTok following tutorials to learn more, but I’m also really grateful that I didn’t and that I was just doing it – real world, trial and error.

“I just hope that those kids are getting out of the screen and applying what they’re learning in real life.”

That ability to learn online is something Martin agrees with, and he’s especially chuffed if it’s from them.

“I’m so flattered by that [idea],” he tells nine.com.au.

“I do think it’s an incredible medium and tool. So much of it is what you’re able to learn, but also what you’re able to kind of keep in the back of your mind … [but] when you find that person or you find that video that you can always go back to, I think it’s incredible.”