Besides her catalog of absolute pop bangers, Chappell Roan is probably best known for her distinct onstage fashion and beauty aesthetic. Her red Botticelli-esque curls and drag-inspired pancake-pale base are ever present, while her costume and makeup looks involve an ever-changing array of neon colors, glitter, and rhinestones. But for her weekend-two performance at Coachella 2024, she spread her sartorial wings, so to speak, and fully metamorphosed into a giant butterfly.
To help complete her transformation into a human-sized insect, Roan enlisted the help of Donni Davy, Euphoria makeup artist and the founder of Half Magic beauty. “I had become really obsessed with her music,” Davy says how their first official collaboration came to be. “Then, when I saw the Coachella lineup, I DMed [Roan] and was like, ‘Can I please do your makeup for free for Coachella?’”
As the creator behind Euphoria’s glittery looks, Davy is basically the godmother of modern festival makeup (in fact, Half Magic handed out face gems on the polo-club grounds), she says this “was literally the first time I’ve ever done makeup for a musician to perform on stage.” A live set came with its own unique challenges, she adds, in particular getting details to project to the back of a giant audience while staying put through a rigorous performance.
But when Roan’s styling team let her know that the star’s look would be pink, red, and black six-foot-wide butterfly wings, Davy says she was inspired to create something glamorous, eye-catching, and, well, insectile. Though she’d previously done butterfly wing-shaped eyeshadow in on Maddie in Euphoria, she wanted to try “something fresh to revamp the butterfly eye-makeup category,” she says. “I’m really excited about antenna eyebrows.”
The result: Hot-pink liner brows; exaggerated, black buggy eye makeup laden with reflective crystals; and shimmery pink and lavender shadow. Roan’s band also got the insect-inspired treatment with face-gem-adorned eyeliner antennae.
The key to meltdown-proof stage makeup, Davy says, is to skip anything too emollient during the skin prep, meaning no oil and heavy moisturizer. She used “just a little” Milk Hydro Grip Primer under Roan’s characteristic white base, which she created using Haus Labs Medium Coverage Foundation in shade 000 mixed with the brand’s long-lasting Hy-Power Pigment Paint in White Onyx Matte. To keep face makeup in place, Davy relied on a combo of heavy-hitting setting sprays, One/Size Mattifying Waterproof Setting Spray and Kryolan Fixing Spray, instead of powders that could potentially cake with sweat.
To go with the pink color palette of the butterfly costume, Davy used Half Magic’s new Glitterpill Eye Paint + Liner in the shade Sweet Prince, which she notes was almost a perfect shade match to the butterfly wings. The finishing touch, which was Roan’s idea, was to place Half Magic’s Iridescent Sparkle Face Gems along her eyebrows.
Butterfly glam complete, all that was left was for Roan to perform to a packed crowd, during which she detached her massive wings to reveal a more manageable set. “She is so just quiet and calm,” Davy says, “and then she gets on stage. And it’s this complete alter ego with wild energy.” That’s Davy’s favorite part of the process, she says: “when my work is done, and I get to watch the talent bring it to life.”