Zendaya's Makeup Artist Reveals His Recipe for Red Carpet Virality

31.07.2026, 02:05 allure.com

For Ernesto Casillas, eyes are where he goes for impact. The longtime celebrity makeup artist has had a season of internet breaking beauty moments—from Zara Larsson’s rosy lids at Billboard’s Women in Music event in April to the white and blue washes on Zendaya’s rounds of press for The Odyssey and Spiderman: Brand New Day.

But what a quick scroll through the artist’s Instagram doesn’t show you is his hectic schedule (when chatting with Allure, Casillas was coming off of eight weeks of travel, except for a few hours in his native Los Angeles) and what a slow build it’s been to those viral red carpet moments. If you weren’t familiar with Casillas before Zendaya walked out with flushed cheeks and barely a whisper of eye makeup on July 14, you are now. The makeup artist’s DMs were flooded immediately after The Odyssey premiere in New York City with people begging for the tutorial and product breakdown, while hundreds of beauty lovers tagged him in their recreations of the look.

It was an overnight success, although it was years in the making. Casillas has followed the same creative process for years. Citing Zendaya’s dress, designed by Matières Fécales, the look came about in similar ways to his past work with Zendaya, with little outside inspiration needed. “I was thinking of beautiful, sunkissed, bronzy skin,” he explains. “I knew that she was going to wear a lot of white, so I started thinking about how to incorporate color in order to break that up.” Typically, he consults with both Zendaya and her longtime stylist Law Roach on the day of, and they flesh out the vision for the look. “We have a dress, and we all have a similar vision. It's been about beautiful, bronzy skin, and if she’s wearing a blue sapphire necklace, maybe we’ll use a pot of blue eyeshadow, just for a pop of color.”

While the film was set in mythical ancient Greece, Casillas didn’t need to look there for inspiration. “At the end of the day, we’re doing makeup for the carpet, not for the film,” he says. “We want to create a moment on the carpet that is both a fashion and a beauty moment, for sure.”

Casillas’ journey with makeup started in a Costco, flipping through Kevyn Aucoin’s books sold at the big box retailer. “Seeing those transformations really had an impact on me,” he remembers. His upbringing and heritage also formed his tastes. “Coming from a Mexican background, there was a really big emphasis on pageant culture, telenovelas, and glamour. So, through college, my goal was to become a beauty and fashion photographer, but I fell in love with makeup. I was doing the makeup for the models, who were my friends, and I decided I wanted to pursue makeup over photography.”

Casillas also grew up in Los Angeles in the early 2000s.” Hollywood was my playground, and basically my backyard,” he quips, and much of his work harkens back to that period, albeit with a twist.

“Fashion [back then] was very dark, smoky eyes, barely-there brows, a lot of contour. I was very into that but at the same time, I had that touch of glamour to me,” Casillas says. Eventually, he was able to find his own take on the styles he grew up admiring. “I put a lot of emphasis on fashion and editorial with very clean makeup, clean skin, an interesting eye. But if I wanted to work with celebrities, they want the glam, they want the beat. That’s where the money is, too. I started leaning into it more because I thought I had to be more fashion and clean and editorial, but I realized there was a market for full glam.”

One of Casillas’s earliest clients was Mel B, the former Spice Girl, whom he first met after reaching out to her hairstylist on the website Model Mayhem. One bronzed look with a smoky eye landed him with the singer for two years before broadening his roster to include Jennifer Lopez, Zendaya, and more. He credits a majorityhis repeat clients to his bedside manner. “A lot of these girls can hire the best of the best, when it comes to technically proficient makeup artists. At the end of the day, most of them want someone whose energy they like around them—someone whose energy is calming or matches theirs,” he says.

Celebrity glam is split between the maximalists, à la Zara Larsson, and more minimal ones, like Hailey Bieber, the way Casillas sees it. He likes to find more inventive ways of melding those two sensibilities, and that’s how he’s found his own (very desirable) niche. “I like that merge and in-between, which is more of what I’ve been doing now,” he says. “It is more toned-down face makeup with a lightweight foundation, sunkissed skin, and a pop of color around the eyes.”

Many of the looks he’s iterated upon from the aughts have their place today, he thinks. Lately, he’s been looking at the more diffused complexions of the decade, although with a greater focus on blending. “Whether it’s bronzy, frosty, peachy or glowy, the idea is to still carve out your face and add tons of dimension,” he explains. “It’s just about making sure it is all blended with perfect transitions. You shouldn’t be able to tell where a color ends and starts. The technique is in diffusing all of it.”

Diving into the details of Casillas’s work also shows more than just a “pop” around the eyes. On Zendaya he’s affixed spider-like lashes and introduced a new generation to highlighted inner corners, and that’s just in the last two months. He does like to find a balance, though, between bolder parts of a look and more natural ones. “We have been really focused on a strong eyebrow, a perfectly symmetrical, perfectly manicured brow. I miss the days when you could do a really impactful eye and the brows were kind of an afterthought, maybe filled in a little and brushed to the side,” he says. ”That was a very effortless look. I would like to see more of that more natural, softer brow come back.”

Balance has come to be much of what Casillas is known for—the colorful eyelid with seamless bronzer, or the wiry lash with a softer brow. “Being able to do both clean, editorial work and transitioning to full beats speaks to my adaptability and versatility as an artist,” he says. As for the influx of attention he’s gotten this summer, it’s not what he strives for, but he’s certainly flattered. “It’s not something I expect or want, but means so much to me.” Further musing on his wins, he says, “I don’t think you need to be the most versatile artist to find success, you can find your own lane. But adaptability will take you a long way.”

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