Color Me Bad

When I think of Trixie Mattel I think of her makeup, her eyes, and her snatched cheekbones. How did her iconic makeup look come to be? 

I always wanted to be a drag queen you could pick out of anywhere. Where most drag queens want to look like women, I wanted to look like a toy. I would look at Amanda Lepore, Dolly Parton, and Lady Bunny, I knew I wanted to go big and blonde with a really manufactured makeup look. 

Really bringing the Barbie Doll look to full affect.

Yeah, I always envisioned Trixie to be like a doll, always the same hair and costumes yet still perplexed and not knowing what to wear. There’s something so glamorous about fussing to just look the same everyday. I wanted to create a look that is iconic and unique to Trixie.

What was the driving force behind you creating Trixie cosmetics?

I used to work in cosmetics and I loved doing people’s makeup! I worked at an Ulta in a small suburb, so my clients were mostly teen girls and old white ladies. Then I worked at a Mac in Mayfair, Milwaukee and probably 90% of my clients were women of color. I had a clientele of all ages, genders, walks of life. I watched and learned what all different kinds of people liked and wanted out of makeup. 

That must have really inspired the way you looked at your collections. 

Look, from drag queens to your aunt who only wears brown mascara, everyone wants the same thing out of makeup. They want something that is fair price, fun, easy to use, and performs well. Of course we might have different looks and techniques, but everyone wants the same thing. I didn’t start out to make a company that only makes makeup for drag queens, I wanted to make something that was for everyone.

I grew up with Polly Pocket and Barbie so the look of the packaging brings up such a feeling of nostalgia. What was the inspiration behind the packaging and imagery?

I have always been a product junkie. When I was young, every paycheck went to makeup and I found that the packaging I loved the most was from makeup at places like Claire’s or toy makeup packaging. I would buy Barbie carrying cases and use it as my makeup case. I just wanted everything to look toy like. I wanted everything to look like the fantasy I wanted to live in. But I found that I was stuck between getting cute toy makeup with a not so great formula, or pro formula in basic black packaging. Our vision was getting pro formulas into kids toy packaging. If I’ve learned anything from drag it’s just that adults want to feel like kids. At Trixie cosmetics, we don’t claim to be reinventing the wheel but we are really focused on the narrative, we are focused on how to make a world out of every collection. 

You guys did amazing last year with sales, all things considered. How did you manage that as a company? 

People bought more makeup from us last year than ever before. People weren’t even going anywhere but they were on these zoom calls tarted up and loving it, and that really helped us grow so much this last year. We were also able to move into a bigger office so we could be at work in our own spaces but still able to feel almost like we were together. For us it’s really about teamwork, we are always trying to impress each other and I think that pushes us all to work harder and think bigger. We have at least one major launch a month this year, last month we launched 'Bottle Blonde' and 'Back to the Fuchsia' within two weeks of each other and have much more coming. 

What does the Trixie team look like?

Creatively, our team is all gay people, women, different colors, ages and walks of life. Like I said, we all manage to work together and still keep each other inspired to be better than our best. We’re an independent makeup company but we are just doing our own thing and having fun. I always say every company has a pride collection, but what if there was actually a LGBTQIA+ owned and run makeup company that was doing that? 

Where do you Trixie cosmetics going in the future? What do you want to do next? 

Unlike most independent makeup CEOS, I have a whole career outside of my makeup line, so I can’t always be in the office or on the production floor. With that being said though, I obviously want us to keep growing. I want to continue to create new color collections, I mean we have things lined up for probably the next year and a half. I could never have predicted the response we have gotten about our products and so, like everything I do with Trixie, I just want to keep going bigger and better. I’m always trying to bridge the gap between the kind of makeup Trixie wears and makeup real people wear every day. Why can’t you get this really fun packaging with a really cunty name with a product and a shade you can actually use every day! We have products that dare you to go out of your comfort zone every once in a while, but we’re still looking out for the natural beauties. 

What are you trying to say with your makeup and with your collections?

We just want to remind people that makeup isn’t that serious. We’re reminding people that the beauty industry as a whole doesn’t just have to be about severity. We aren’t trying to make people think that everything has to be serious, cunty, perfect, and fierce. We’re reminding you that I’m still a man in a wig selling toy blush, but at the end of the day we’re all in a little bit of drag. We’re all doing body modifications. There is no difference between wearing 12 pairs of lashes like I do or just one coat of brown mascara. We’re all changing parts of ourselves knowing it’s temporary and not real, but there’s something very glamours about that type of self care. Life can be very droll and very boring sometimes, but I’m happy knowing that somebody might reach into their bag one day and pull out a mascara that’s in a pink tube with my name on it and just for a second they’ll get a little break.