THE EXPERTS ARE BACK

After years of celebrity and influencer launches, top makeup artists and hairstylists are e reclaiming the spotlight.

- By Kathleen Hou

Makeup artist Hung Vanngo's Color Story palette.

There are some invisible hands in your Sephora cart. These fingers and palms have cradled, molded, massaged, and brushed some of the most well-known faces and hair for decades, and now they've created their own lines-testing hundreds of formulas, handpicking the best shades, and pouring their expertise into every creation. This fall, you'll be able to find debut collections from hairstylist Chris McMillan and makeup artists Hung Vanngo and Mary Phillips, with products that they promise will perform. "We're doing this every day on the most famous people in the world," Phillips says. "We know what works and what doesn't work."

Mary Phillips's m.ph Lip Ciggy is better than smoking.

THE MASTER OF DRAMA

The names in Hung Vanngo's signature makeup line, Hung Vanngo Beauty, tell his story: Phanat Nikhom is a peach-brown lipstick—and the name of the refugee camp in Thailand where he spent three years after fleeing Vietnam. MaMe, a light pink lip color, is a portmanteau of two Vietnamese words for “Mom,” while the blush Single Mother honors her as well. Wild Rose refers to a nickname for the Canadian province where Vanngo spent his formative years thinking about his Wildest Dreams, which included hoping for his Big Break, working with Award Winner(s), and his First Cover. “I want everything to be meaningful. I could have [just done] cool French names or something like that, but it wouldn't have meant anything to me. That's not what this is about.”