‘Euphoria’ Makeup Artist Donni Davy Talks Launching Her Half Magic Beauty Brand
“Euphoria” makeup artist Donni Davy is leveraging her popular beauty looks for her own cosmetics line.
Davy announced the brand, called Half Magic, on Tuesday, which will offer makeup products that recreate the bold, whimsical looks she’s created for the last two seasons of the hit HBO show. Davy started developing the brand shortly after the first season of “Euphoria” aired in 2019.
More from WWD
“After what happened with season one and the ‘Euphoria’ makeup trend, it sort of was an organic kind of thing to start thinking about ‘what if I made a line,’” Davy said. “I really wanted to make sure if I was going to do it, then I was going to do it from scratch. I had this opportunity to do it and I just thought it would be so fun to do and to provide people with specific products that are made to make multidimensional, colorful color-scapes on your eyes.”
Half Magic will debut in May with an assortment of products that can achieve a full look. The brand’s hero product is Chrome Addiction, an eye product that comes in mattes, shimmers and glitter and in an array of bold colors and earth tones. Half Magic will also offer tools that will make it easy for the user to create a graphic makeup look.
“It’s definitely inspired by fantastical, heightened, twinkling, colorful makeup looks that you see on ‘Euphoria,’ but also from the people who have recreated [the looks] on their own,” she said. “That’s a true source of inspiration to me: to see how people have been inspired [by “Euphoria”]. I’m inspired by how I see Gen Z doing [the looks] and I put it on the screen and then the Gen Z makeup community is inspired by that and then I’m inspired, so it’s an endless circle of inspiration.”
The makeup artist explained that the brand’s name was the hardest to figure out, but was chosen to reflect her aesthetic of marrying graphic makeup looks with the everyday.
“There was something really specific that I wanted to touch on with Half Magic,” she said. “The half part is sort of like the looks are fantastical and heightened, but also the part that makes it magical is the everyday-ness of the nature of wearing a fantastical, sparkly rhinestone wing to the grocery store or to work or school.”
Davy used the Half Magic products to create some of the beauty looks on the second season of “Euphoria.” When the season first came out, Davy explained the vibe of the looks as “emotional glam.”
“Similar to last season, the makeup designs are all coming from a place of what the characters are going through,” she said in a January interview with WWD. “It’s sort of emotional glam, that’s what I’ve been calling it this season. The approach is always to work collaboratively with the cast members and understand where they’re coming from in a particular scene or episode and get their take on what their frame of mind is.”
Davy explained that with “Euphoria” season two, she initially felt pressure to deliver the same level of graphic beauty looks that resonated so heavily with fans and has found that the show’s looks are still having an impact on viewers.
“The aesthetic of the show has changed a bit, so my work has changed a bit and evolved,” she said. “Certain parts got more minimal and other elements got turned up. I wasn’t really sure how people would receive it. Like, did people just want to see the same big glitter neon looks? I don’t know, people probably did, but I was really happy with how the looks turned out and the reception has been awesome.”
READ MORE HERE:
Donni Davy Talks the ‘Emotional Glam’ Makeup in ‘Euphoria’ Season Two
‘Euphoria’ Season Two Leans Into Fantastical Fashion
‘Euphoria’ Season Two Premiere Causes Surge in Fashion Searches
Best of WWD
Sign up for WWD's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.