Unless you’re deeply invested in the beauty world, you might not recognize Andrew Dahling‘s name at first glance. But just one look at his work would have you, your technologically stunted parents, and even your radio-loving grandmother gasping in recognition. No, you may not know his name right now, but you saw his handiwork littering magazine covers, award-show red carpets, and every popular social media platform over the past year on the canvas that is Chappell Roan.
Born Andrew Karrick, Dahling came up in rural Kentucky, and “visions of grandeur” took up more mental real estate than his parents would have liked. The glittering grit of fashionable city life called to him from miles away. His free time was spent watching ’90s VHS tapes of the New York City club-kid scene on YouTube, sketching fashion designs onto models with stamped-on mugs, and practicing makeup in secret. Dahling seemed predetermined for greatness, and he allowed the self-described “psychedelic current” of creativity to carry him through his first six years in New York City before transforming the Grammy Award–winning artist into a blunt-smoking Statue of Liberty for her headline-making performance at the 2024 Governors Ball. It was their first collaboration, might we add.
There’s an air of quiet confidence around the spellbinding makeup artist when we meet during a video call. A mannequin looms at his window for sewing projects, and archival magazine covers and bespoke fashion sketches paper the walls—a reminder of the end goal, the mountain to summit next. “I’ve always felt like I’m some sort of vessel. I’m supposed to be doing something important,” he tells Who What Wear. “My life has always felt like it belongs to that.”
Ahead, take a peek inside the mind of the artist helping craft the makeup looks of the industry’s favorite Midwest princess, see the products that changed his artistry for good, and learn about the dreams left to manifest for this enthralling talent.
Your clientele and the art you create together are so celebrated, but I want to turn the lens back on you. Can you tell me a bit about yourself—your childhood, your family, where you’re from?
I grew up in a really small town in Kentucky. Not much going on there. We were the first neighborhood on this long road. It was just [a] very quintessential, all-American childhood, you know—around a lot of family, cookouts, super close to my grandparents. It was very sweet, but it stopped serving me.
It didn’t really nurture my creativity in any way, and nobody in my family had ever met somebody like me before. They didn’t know what to do with me. I was the black sheep, so I felt a little angry, and [I] just had a rough time with the teenage/early adult years. I didn’t see anyone around me that I was like, “Oh, I want to be like them.”
So then Tumblr and social media and the internet and Gaga—I just had all these little awakenings all over the Internet of all these subcultures and people that were out there, mostly in New York or London or Berlin or something. I was like, “God, I just want to be like them. I want to be them. I want their life.”
I just rebelled. I slowly started painting my fingernails and filling in my brows. One time in high school, my friends found a brow pencil under my pillow, and they were like, “What is this? You fill in your brows?”
My parents didn’t get it. Every time I wanted to wear something cool to a family party, they’d be like, “Can you just not?” So I was always the problem. I was always the one “trying to make a statement,” but really, I was just existing.
(Image credit: Who What Wear)
Makeup was always something that I loved. When I was a kid, I would draw women all the time, and they would have stamped mugs on, huge lips. They were just glamour.
I [had gone] to college for musical theater. Hated it. Just did not belong in that crowd. I literally sang Lady Gaga songs as my audition for Into the Woods. I just did not belong in musical theater, but I loved to be flamboyant and perform. I loved the whole world of glamour, the clothes, the makeup, the hair, everything. So then I got into makeup because it was the easiest thing to get into at the time. … You go to a beauty counter and sell makeup to old white women. So that was kind of fun.
And then I hated it. I was like, “I gotta get out of here,” so I saved a bunch of money—as much as I needed to survive a month in New York—moved here in 2018, and then it kind of spiraled.
My first job besides Buca di Beppo in Times Square was at the MAC counter. I met a bunch of people there, and it just kept manifesting different connections. Now, here I am.
How did you go from under-pillow brow pencils to the work you do now? Before working professionally, did you teach yourself?
I think the codes just existed already. I don’t want to get too esoteric, but DNA programs, past lives… There’s something to that that I really believe in.
I’m not sure if I can define it as one thing. I think just a lot of practice, but not an insane amount. I wasn’t in a studio for years painting, so I think it was just always there. I drew a lot as a kid. My punishment as a kid was my art supplies being taken away from me.
I used to work for [makeup artist] Kabuki. … He is, like, the god. Before Kabuki, there wasn’t really a makeup artist in my life. Nobody really taught me how to do it. I didn’t go to art school. I just found my own little way of doing things.
(Image credit: Who What Wear)
Which products and techniques ended up changing the game for you?
Danessa Myricks Colorfix is just unbelievable. And brushes, bitch. You need good brushes. A good brush will make your makeup look so much better. It’s insane.
Also, I always say to sketch things out first with a brow pencil, and then I go step by step [from] light to dark. It’s the thing I always do to be able to create such an intricate design on my face without going totally cross-eyed and getting lost.
Danessa Myricks Beauty
Colorfix Multi-Use Liquid Pigment
Omnia Brush
Pro Deluxe Blending Makeup Brush Set
Addiction Tokyo
Eyeshadow Brush D 02
Eigshow beauty
Pro Precision Gel Eyeliner Brush
You were inspired by the club-kid scene growing up. How did you get into it in New York City?
One of the first things I did when I moved here was get Susanne Bartsch‘s phone number, which was crazy to me at the time. My friend [that] I had worked with introduced me to her, so I started doing her makeup.
I was too afraid to ask, but all I wanted when I moved here was to be a Susanne Bartsch girl. I remember going up to them at parties and embarrassing myself because I knew so much about these people. It was like a religion to me. So she looks at me, and she’s like, “Do you want to host?” And I was like, “Yes!”
Where do you find inspiration? It feels refreshingly unique—very you.
One of the things that I am very passionate about is being original. I don’t love showing up to sets or doing jobs where you are only there to execute somebody else’s work on the mood board.
I, of course, consumed as much media as I possibly could. I would just live on YouTube and Tumblr looking up videos of people with VHSes in the ’90s that would go out to the clubs in New York. [I watched] all the documentaries I could find on Leigh Bowery and that whole scene in London. Vivienne Westwood and David Bowie… You know, that world.
I have this sort of regalia, psychedelic current that runs through my brain when I create things. I design clothes a lot on my sketch pad. I feel like I’m always designing for a gay prince on some alien advanced world.
I started working with [Kabuki] through Richie Rich, who I met through somebody I met at the MAC counter. He was one of the OG famous club kids in New York. So all of these people come through me, but I don’t want to be just another makeup artist that executes trends and references from the past. I love the idea of aesthetics and picking from and living in worlds from the past, but I really just want to create a new world that doesn’t exist already.
You’ve had an explosive year. What would you identify as the turning point in your career thus far?
The most drastic experience—like a quantum-leap type of experience—was definitely Gov Ball. To see that many people just screaming, shouting, hooting and hollering, singing along, waving the pink bandanas, I was like, “Oh my God.” The most important thing to me is always impact, especially after everything I’ve experienced.
I don’t really think I care about these worldly titles, and to see that many people affected by her and all collectively celebrating this message that she stands for, who she is, her creativity, and the spirit of who Chappell Roan is and then to be part of making this really major moment happen, I just sobbed. I was like, “This is all I ever wanted.”
Like fuck, who cares about the numbers and the statistics and what people think and blah, blah, blah? That moment—being onstage and looking out and seeing everyone else—that was it.
(Image credit: Marleen Moise/Getty Images)
If you had to pick, what are your favorite looks you’ve done on yourself and someone else?
The one pinned at the top of my Instagram is my favorite. It’s the most representative of the absolutely ridiculous style that I’m going after. It doesn’t make any sense. It looks alien, like it could be some sort of weird deity.
On somebody else… I mean, I’m just gonna say the Statue of Liberty solely for the fact that it was so major.
Speaking of Chappell, how did you end up on her coveted team?
This was actually crazy. I was doing my normal Glamsquad [job], walking around the streets of New York, and I get a message from Adam Lambert on Instagram. He’s like, “Hey, love your work. I have this photo shoot. Can you come do my makeup in L.A.?” And I was like, “Yes, I’m there.”
I get there, and I learn that one of my high school friends, Hunter Clem—he’s a stylist for Gaga—is styling the shoot. Hunter had worked with Genesis [Webb] for a while, so she was there as Hunter’s assistant.
This whole time, I had already known who she was and that she had worked with Chappell. I was kind of playing it cool—like, “I’m not gonna ask… Ya know, if it’s mentioned…” Toward the end, she asked if I would ever want to do Chappell’s makeup.
She was like, “How good is your white base?” I was like, “I’m a professional clown. I do white bases in my sleep. That is not a problem.”
(Image credit: Who What Wear)
You have some serious manifestation powers. Are you one of those people who just knew this would happen for you?
Yes, I think so. I’ve known for a long time that my relationship with the world is unique in the way that I see these people at the very top—you know, the biggest pop stars and the biggest fashion designers—and I felt like I could understand them in a way that was bigger than their music or art or how famous they were.
I’ve always felt like I’m some sort of vessel. I’m supposed to be doing something important. And my life has always felt like it belongs to that.
(Image credit: Who What Wear)
If you could go back and tell your younger self something, what would it be?
I would say to be careful about which patterns and habitual numbing or dissociative tendencies you choose to indulge in because the pain, the emotion, the craziness that goes on inside your head is some sort of… I don’t know—I’m seeing a liquid being alchemized into gold.
It’s not something to run away from; the darkness isn’t something to be scared of. You’re not wrong. You’re not, like, secretly evil. If I were able to alchemize some of the darkness sooner, I would have been able to come into more of my power, but I was so self-conscious and played so small.
(Image credit: Who What Wear)
I have a feeling you’re just getting started. What’s a future goal you can’t wait to check off?
I love being a makeup artist, but I have always loved fashion just as much. I have sketchbooks that are full of designs. I’ve been trying to sew more and do club-kid looks, but it’s proving to be rather challenging.
So fashion might be it for you?
I think it will be. I just want to combine everything. I have visions of grandeur that just transcend and combine everything: performance, music, fashion, makeup, and hair… so many ideas. I’m just waiting for the version of reality where I have the resources to pull something like that off.
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