After four long years, we finally have our Euphoria Sundays back, and to quote Cassie, I have never, ever been happier. Last week, the HBO show returned with a (controversial) first episode which caught up with the original characters four years post-high school. In last night’s second episode, we met the showgirls of the Silver Slipper strip club – including Rosalía in her debut acting role – and it became clear that #euphoriamakeup had risen from the ashes of season one.

When Euphoria came out in 2019, it had an immediate impact on the beauty industry. Overnight our online and offline worlds were filled with colourful, bejewelled looks as rhinestones and vivid eyeliner took over the runways of fashion week, TikTok and street style. It’s not surprising that the show’s make-up designer Doniella Davy won an Emmy for outstanding make-up. It wasn’t just the vast amounts of glitter that had us all dazzled, but also how the beauty was approached – as an important storytelling tool that expressed just as much about the characters' personalities and emotions as the dialogue or costumes. It reflected the contemporary mindset around make-up as a creative outlet, and a vital part of identity and self-expression. 

“I think the art of putting make-up on can change people’s lives. I literally have had people tell me that make-up has saved their lives, and changed their lives forever,” Davy tells me. She isn’t exaggerating. In March, I spent a week with Davy, travelling across London, Manchester and Liverpool as she (finally!) launched her beauty brand, Half Magic Beauty, into the UK. During that time, countless people wanted time with her, alone, to share how profoundly she had impacted them for the better. Davy firmly believes in make-up's power to transform how a person feels about themselves, and through her artistry she cultivates a space where everyone is welcome. 

Alongside the big launch in Sephora UK, later this month Half Magic Beauty is also releasing a limited edition Euphoria collection, with new shades, new products and signature shades for each of the leading ladies (including Kat – gone but never forgotten). The packaging is inscribed with Davy’s original shownotes, allowing you to recreate the Euphoria make-up looks with guidance straight from her heart. Here, she tells us how life imitated art, and how much she enjoyed introducing the dancers of Euphoria to her innovative glitter creations.

This is the first Euphoria season we’ve had since your brand Half Magic Beauty officially launched. What can we expect from that overlap? 

Doniella Davy: Half Magic Beauty is all over this season and on everybody’s faces. It was fully stocked in the make-up trailer. We used the samples on season two, but now we have the real deal. So if you are using Half Magic Beauty to do your Euphoria recreations, you are actually recreating the looks. Season three has everything from colourful eyeshadows, sparkly eyelids and frosty lips, to big, juicy lip liner, and wet, sparkly lips. There’s shimmering, blushing cheeks and winged liner – so much winged liner! 

In this season, colour is used in a slightly more subtle way but there are definitely some make-up moments that are gonna scratch the season one itch of rhinestones. There are a lot of really fun character make-up looks, too. Rosalía plays a stripper called Magick, and she was my favourite to design the looks for this season. We had quite a few new characters to create. 

Was it fun to get into the world building of the new characters because we know the others so well by now? 

Doniella Davy: Yeah, it was super fun to get into that. A lot of this season takes place in a strip club called the Silver Slipper. It was really fun to imagine the looks of these dancers within this setting. Half Magic Beauty is perfect for that because it holds up on stage. I used the Dopamine Sparkle Glitterpuck all over these dancers’ bodies, on their boobs, on their butts, on their faces. This is a water-infused formula inspired by my years on set. If you use an oil base with glitter, it creates a film that dulls the sparkle. Being water-based makes them as high-shine as possible so they look really saturated and pure. It looks really beautiful on all skin tones.

They’re also wearing glitter liners and Glitterpills, Crystal Butter, Magic Drip, and the lip liners. We used make-up absolutely everywhere so we were going through so much product. It’s like a Half Magic Beauty explosion! And I loved getting to introduce the brand to all the extras. Some of them were dancers in real life. Having them come in and say, ‘We’ve shopped the brand! We love how the rhinestones and glitter hold up, the lip liners, we’re gonna be wearing it in our lives!” was really special. 

When we last spoke, Half Magic Beauty was a baby. Now the brand is nearly four years old! You’ve built such a like-minded community, and Half Magic Beauty feels like a make-up safe space. Was that intentional? 

Doniella Davy: It wasn’t intentional but it’s also not surprising. We’ve found the exact community I thought would be here. I knew in creating this brand and these products that a certain type of person would find them. They demand a certain amount of culture and meaning out of their life, but also out of the brands that they buy into. These are people who want to stand out a little bit and they have fun! They’re open to wearing anything, trying anything, and they’re into stuff that is culturally and emotionally resonant. 

For that person, it’s not generational. It’s not like a ‘Gen Z vs Millennial’ thing. It’s a mindset. What’s been so exciting is just seeing all different types of people find us at different ages. We get so many people writing into the brand in their 50’s or 60’s. They’ll say ‘hey, I know I’m not your target audience, but you are my people!’ 

I think before you came along, that safe space was missing in make-up for a while. 

Doniella Davy: I agree with you, there was a missing place. I think a lot of brands that offer a similar mentality kind of come at it as a ‘cool girl’ brand. Don’t get me wrong, Half Magic Beauty is super fucking cool, but we’re not a ‘cool girl’ brand. We’re the warmest! We’re artistry led, but playful and warm and inclusive. Half Magic Beauty takes away any idea that you need to do X, Y and Z to use this make-up. Everything’s designed to alleviate pressure, and that’s because I don’t have formal training as a make-up artist. I hate restrictions, rules and authority. I hate people telling me I need to do things a certain way.

Half Magic Beauty isn’t just about self-expression. Sometimes self-discovery happens first, and that’s the more tender moment. I went through this during COVID. I started experimenting on my own face for the first time. I was like, ‘Oh! I can do this make-up too, it’s not just for the movies and films I work on.” I’m 37 now, but when I started doing it for the first time I was 30. Experimenting is like peeling different layers of yourself off and finding a new way of expressing yourself. 

Why do you think Euphoria and your artistry on the show continues to touch people in such a powerful way? 

Doniella Davy: Euphoria is this magical thing because it’s so visceral. The cinematography, the performance, the music; it can shake you to your core. I am still shaken by the music, or in seeing my work and how that played a role in the show. It deals with really heartbreaking subject matter in all three seasons. During these difficult times, even though we are feeling so much all the time, it’s important to keep deeply feeling all the emotions. The cool thing about Euphoria is that the highs are high, the lows are low, and it feels good to feel it all.  

When you get meaningful feedback from people that connect with the brand or with your work, how does that impact the vision for everything you do moving forward? 

Doniella Davy: My biggest dream is that my work, even though it’s just make-up, will hit someone in a certain way and make them feel inspired. The whole point of me getting into film and TV make-up was that I wanted to use make-up as a medium for emotional storytelling. I love that, and I feel like I’m here to do that.

I feel that way too! 

Doniella Davy: It makes me emotional seeing glitter twinkling in low lights while characters are going through shit. It’s just more poetic. There is something so emotive in glitter and rhinestones especially. There’s such an innocence about them, and they represent a tension between childhood, adolescence and adulthood. When these girls are wearing them and going through this traumatic stuff, there’s something more heartbreaking about it. 

I always think about the characters starting off their days. Let’s say the carnival episode in season one. Jules is putting on her rhinestones because she knows she’s going to meet her online crush later. And then when she does, she’s devastated because it’s Nate, and it’s fucking terrorising. She’s so sad, looking up at him. Her rhinestone is catching the light, and it looks like a tear, and it’s just so sweet and so heartbreaking. She started her night in such an optimistic way and it ends in such a crushing way. That’s that tension between childhood and growing up. 

If there’s someone reading that feels ‘other’, or they don’t have a safe space in their day-to-day life yet, what words of wisdom do you have for them?

Doniella Davy: Using make-up can be such a superpower. It’s so freeing and therapeutic to find your signature thing that makes you happy and wear it in the world. Doing that is brave, though. A lot of people will never experience that. So already, if you feel ‘other’ – maybe you feel like you’re the only one in your town who’s like that – you are insanely brave. When I see those people out, I’m like, ‘those are our people!’ You could so easily just be another fish in the stream, but you’re swimming upstream, and I fuck with that so hard. 

The Euphoria x Half Magic Beauty collection launches at Sephora on April 29.