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In the pre-Instagram era, before tutorials and influencers shaped how we conceive of beauty, makeup artist Daniel Martin’s name circled among those in the know. Fashion figures summoned house calls. Proenza Schouler booked him for shoots. For Chloe Sevigny’s 2014 Met Gala look, he collaborated with Tatcha, the Japanese-inspired beauty line, on a custom lipstick in the traditional geisha red. Martin’s deft way with skin—naturalistic, without a pileup of foundation—won him clients, who in turn became friends. Some landed hit television roles (Elisabeth Moss), another launched a beauty empire (Jessica Alba), and one even married a prince.
That, of course, is how the rest of the world met Martin: as the man behind Meghan Markle’s luminous wedding makeup. (As he told me soon after, “I got so many great responses from moms, thanking me for showing their daughter that they don’t need to wear so much makeup to school.”) If that day was a game-changer for his career, today is as well, as Martin becomes Tatcha’s first-ever global director of artistry and education.
“I really couldn’t pass up this opportunity,” Martin said in a call this week, describing the offer from Tatcha founder Vicky Tsai. The two have been friends for nearly a decade—going back to when she reached out on LinkedIn, offering to send him samples of her now-iconic blotting sheets. Fittingly, a tenth-anniversary reissue of the oil-wicking Aburatorigami papers is their first official collaboration, with Martin suggesting a horizontal format to better fit inside a red-carpet clutch. Even with premieres on pause, the product has never been more indispensable in this humid season of face coverings. I joked about using the wafer-thin papers to line my mask.
For the makeup artist, fresh off long-running relationships with Dior and Honest Beauty, signing on with Tatcha offers a rare creative challenge. The brand, acquired by Unilever last year, is in an expansion phase; hewing to its clean-ingredient ethos, it’s also focused on sustainability in packaging and pigment sourcing. “This is like Peter Phillips of Dior; this is Lucia [Pica] at Chanel,” Martin said of the role, referring to the makeup artists at the helm of those two storied houses. The fact that Tatcha specializes in skin care—the pandemic's best-performing category as people shift into minimal makeup—makes this a particularly prescient move. “Taking care of people through their skin, that’s what it’s going to be about for me,” Martin said of the multitasking products he is developing for next year. “The modern contemporary woman wants skin-care benefits in their color cosmetics, but they don’t want anything fussy.”
In the meantime, you can expect to see more of Martin’s cherubic face on digital platforms—not all that different from his recent Zoom with Moss. “She had to do a bunch of press for the movie Shirley,” Martin said, “and I showed her how to do her makeup so she’s camera-ready for all these interviews.” Speaking of essentials, here is his rundown of summer hits, from everyday sunscreen to the ’90s documentaries that encouraged the aspiring club kid in grunge-era Seattle to make his home in New York.
Sunscreen: “My melasma has gotten really bad this year, and I found a sunscreen that’s got an SPF of 50—physical and chemical—by a brand called Jaxon Lane. Today I used the Tatcha essence and then used this afterward, and it just feels so comfortable on my skin.”
Cleanser: “I'm going through so many face washes right now. On my head—this is so weird—I'll use Nécessaire’s body exfoliator as a pre-shave. It's so good. This is the perfect summer all-over cleanser/exfoliator—guy, girl, whatever—because it does the trick and smells amazing with the eucalyptus.”
Concealer: “The Dior Forever concealer is so good. When I'm being lazy and don't want to do a full face for the camera, I'll mix a bit of that concealer with the Tatcha Silk Canvas, and that's my foundation—because the Silk Canvas will blur out my pores, but the concealer just evens out my skin tone.”
Royal moment: “Meghan surprised me for my birthday, actually. She was coming to see Serena play at the U.S. Open last fall, and she was, like, ‘Hey, I'm in town! Let's celebrate your birthday.’ And I was, like, what?! We had cupcakes over at her place. It was really nice.”
Screen time: “Paris Is Burning is at the top on my list. [My favorite part is] in the beginning when they're explaining all of the slang because that was truly everyone's understanding of gay slang and ball culture, and what ‘butch queen’ is. That was so educational for anyone who wasn't in New York at that time. Also, Isaac Mizrahi's Unzipped documentary—that completely shaped me wanting to really, really come to New York. It basically was the fashion version of Madonna's Truth or Dare. I mean, Truth or Dare will always be like up there with Paris Is Burning—but when you loved fashion from afar and got to see what it was like to put together a collection, that was, like, every little gay boy's dream.”
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Vintage obsession: “1stdibs is my eBay, and I'm always searching for ’90s fashion: vintage Jean Paul Gaultier, JPG; vintage Comme des Garçons. I found this awesome Vivienne Westwood patent leather bag recently. I shop to buy [rather than browse] because I'm a dork and that's all we did the last three months.”
Guilty indulgence: “Binge-watching reruns of The Golden Girls while using both Tatcha's Dewy Skin mask and Joanna Vargas's Glow Wand!”
Good cause: “I'm excited to really get to know Room to Read. That's an organization that Tatcha has supported since 2014, benefitting girls in low-income communities, but they're now expanding that platform even further. Remote learning is going to be a big thing. It'll help bring computers and tablets to kids who don't have them at home already.”
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