Interview conducted on March 20, 2023

by Ryan Lowe, edited by Ben Pigott

Ryan: Makeup is your business, what has been the most important thing that happened to you in this business?

Marcelo: This job is a lot of word of mouth and the most important thing to me is having really influential and smart people advocating for me. I can only do so much and advocate for myself, but the other part is people pushing for you and wanting you to be on certain shoots. Models and stylists really being aggressive about wanting me at their shoots, that’s super important.

RL: How does someone get there?

MG: I’m self-taught. My background is in fine art, I went to school for painting and performance art. My father is a painter and my mom is also a creative but I’ve loved fashion since I was little, it’s storytelling. I love film and music and all of those things come together. It was bound to be something I jumped into. I think it always comes down to this idea that fashion or the entertainment industry is ‘fake it ‘til you make it’ but you can’t fake an authentic connection. An authentic connection goes a lot farther than kissing people’s asses, people can pick up on that really quickly and that doesn’t reach as far. I just trust the process and try and be the most professional, kind, and interested person I can be. I think when you vibe with someone and connect on a personal basis or a cultural basis or on a creative level, you have to cherish that. When people connect it makes sense and when they don’t, they don’t. I’ve never believed in forcing relationships.

RL: I first became acquainted with your world from the Vogue Italia, May 2022 cover with Joan Smalls. Tell me more about that.

MG: That was my first Italian Vogue cover which is huge for me. That was also the first time I worked with Joan Smalls who is a legend, supermodel, and inspiration for so many people. She had requested me to do her makeup and it had all come together really last minute. It was shot in Milan, I think I flew in only two days before and I just got on a flight the next day. Was there for 48 hours and went back to New York. It was another example of these incredible women advocating for me and seeing the potential of the collaboration – Joan wanted to look a certain way and push her own visual agenda forward. She saw what I had done before and she requested me which was such an honor. Since then she’s been so kind and supportive.

RL: You’re established in New York but what are some of your favorite places you’ve had the opportunity to work in?

MG: I love Paris because it’s kind of like New York in the sense that it’s very walkable, a lot of people watching, and more romantic than New York. It has so much history. Another part of the job is you get to go shoot in places that you would never even think of going. I’ve shot a lot in Bulgaria. I didn’t necessarily know exactly where that was on the map, I knew it was Eastern Europe but I had never thought about going there. It’s just one of those jobs where the perk is your expansion of knowledge and culture. I’m always grateful to be constantly absorbing different cultures, personalities, and ideas. All of this stuff, if you’re good at your job, you kind of take it into your creative spirit for future projects. You can only grow from it. Sometimes it’s not the most glamorous location but there are always little things that you pick up. Colors, textures, and sayings that you should try and absorb.

RL: Where are you from? 

MG: I was born in Bogotá, Colombia in 1994 and we moved from Colombia to Florida when I was five or six because of the drug war in the 90s, with the cartel. We came as refugees, I was the first one to learn English in my family. It’s a classic refugee immigrant story. I’ve had an incredibly supportive family and I think that makes a huge difference. Whether it’s your biological family or your chosen family or your community, if they’re supportive of you, you feel that strength. Going after something alone can feel daunting because a lot of people won’t understand it for a long time until it makes sense.

RL: I saw you worked with Petra Collins, tell me about the process that you both used to make the images that I’ve seen.

MG: Petra and I came together far before the pandemic, maybe about six years ago… It was Petra Collins and Renell Medrano that I started really working with consistently. Petra Collins and I’s collaboration was very intuitive. She’s an intuitive artist and she has her visual language that she was always working in and pushing. It was a visual language that I very much understood. There’s a fantasy element to it, kind of a darkness to it, there’s a tenderness to it and there’s humor in it too. I’m also that way too, I don’t stray away from dark things or sweet things, I enjoy fantasy and I enjoy storytelling and she’s an incredible storyteller. Very few people nowadays lean into genuine storytelling through image, especially in fashion. Our collaboration was kind of instant and I was just doing everything with her since then. She trusted me to create what I wanted and I knew the vibe. A lot of times the way I work is I create a character in my head, what this person or character is, and from there I develop the makeup look. She’s a storyteller and a director and we think alike in that way. 

RL: Do you consider yourself a painter?

MG: Yes, I’m always creating narratives to make sense of things.

RL: Name some of your favorite colors to use and why?

MG: One of my favorite colors is pink. Pink can be a color that seems really obvious in certain places but pink is also a really polarizing color. It’s a color that everyone seems to have a knee-jerk reaction to whether it’s because of gender or where it is, what kind of shade of pink. Pink has been used in such an array of ways that it is kind of a controversial color, even when it might seem so sweet. It’s a culturally packed color and when you use it well it can really drill in a certain idea. 

RL: You’ve worked with Alek Wek, explain that experience with W Magazine. What is she like?

MG: Alek was there. Alek is someone I grew up seeing in magazines and I was so grateful to be in her presence. She’s not just a supermodel, she is someone who quite literally changed the fashion industry and the world. The world hadn’t glamorized and appreciated someone like her until she took up that space. She opened up the door for so many models in fashion today, she’s incredible. It was an honor to watch her get into character and try on the clothes. She’s a true artist. Some models tell stories with their bodies and get into a character. It becomes a performance. I’m humbled by who I get to work with because they have such an elaborate story and a treasure of wisdom, if I could get one ounce of advice from them then I’m good. Those are things you have to cherish.

RL: I love seeing her on the runway... Out of all of the people that you’ve come across in the fashion industry who has been the most impactful? Some people you worked with are on posters in people’s bedrooms, they worship them. What is that like?

MG: It’s funny thinking about it that way. It’s humbling and it’s also something that when I get reminded of it, it drives me to keep creating images that younger people are aspiring to look at. Being allowed by my peers to express myself when I want something different, I’ve done makeup looks that aren’t necessarily considered ‘beautiful’ in a traditional way. Being trusted by models to make them look stunning but not in a glamorous way. The trust I have with models like Paloma Elsesser or Evanie Frausto, who does hair, these are people that I’ve worked with for so long that there’s a level of trust and creative flow to what we do. I’m just constantly grateful for being allowed to be seen as an artist and not as a tool.

RL: Any films where the makeup really speaks to you?

MG: Stuff that I saw when I was a little boy in Star Wars: Episode 1… Natalie Portman as Queen Amidala, so many of those makeup looks are referential of Asian culture and practices but the way that it was put together in the hyper-galactic, futuristic space –– I was like, ‘What is this?’ And I think you still see that referenced in my work sometimes. Futurized, galactic, otherworldly but simple beauty. 

RL: Where do you see your career in 1 year? Maybe 5 years? Do you plan on living in New York for a while?

MG: I definitely see myself staying in New York but I also see myself working in Paris more. New York is definitely my home, it’s where I find my community and inspiration. I moved around a lot when I was younger and none of the places I lived in I would consider home. New York being home is something I enjoy. I see myself continuing to fly all over the place for work. I see my ideas getting a little bit more refined and specific. So much can happen in a year. I think more about legacy and less about the immediacy of things, you know what I mean? When I work on certain projects I think about how they contribute to the broader picture versus instant gratification. I try not to work on too many editorials, let’s say, just for the sake of having something to share. I’d rather not work on something than work on something that I know won’t be as strong as something I could be in. Quality over quantity.

RL: I read an article from The Cut and it said you received a direct message from Pat McGrath, how did that make you feel?
MG: Who knows if it was even her but when her people reached out I wasn’t taking makeup very seriously, I was out in New York clubbing and putting makeup on when I went out. I screenshotted it like four times, I thought it wasn’t real. It was real and I went to LA to meet with her and her team. Everyone else there was so professional at makeup and I hadn’t even taken it seriously. For her to have the foresight in what I was capable of really cemented and almost forced me to take it seriously. You can’t have someone as legendary and trailblazing as Pat McGrath and not take that as a hint from the stars to focus on this. It would be a waste of a moment to not have given it a shot. I took it very seriously after that and now here we are.

RL: You inspire me a lot and your imagination with makeup is a nice change of pace. How are you able to make such an impact in such a short amount of time?
MG: I really appreciate that. I don’t have a great perception of what I’m doing, obviously, it’s going well so that’s a good thing. It’s good and healthy, I don’t have an obsession with perception and I would say that’s actually the answer to your question. I just follow my gut, I do whatever I want. I’m walking down the street and I see graffiti on the wall and say, ‘Hey, let’s put that on someone’s face,’ I don’t judge myself for it being graffiti. It’s how I translate that into an idea, that’s most important. If anything I try to avoid looking at too many artists’ makeup work or I try to isolate my time from current images to a minimum. With Instagram and Tik Tok, there’s such an obsession with trends and you see makeup starting to look very similar, in waves. If I can try to steer clear from that a little bit then that’s good. I focus on the things I’m genuinely inspired by. Sometimes it’s scary to share an idea because it’s coming from me and it’s very personal but that’s when people get to know you better.

RL: Any advice to people out there who are less fortunate and want to get into the makeup business?

MG: Start by absorbing as much history as you can. Musical history, film history, and art history. Enjoy life, fall in love, get your heart broken, and start to feel a lot of feelings. You’re going to draw inspiration from your feelings and the past. How you put those together and become the ideas of the future, I would say just start cultivating life and then start working with your friends. Start practicing with your friends. When you feel comfortable enough and you can look at your work objectively and you can start to message people. When I moved to New York and I didn’t know anybody I was DMing people like crazy. I didn’t care, I had nothing to lose. Similarly, how you are reaching out and communicating with people, we’re all people and we have nothing to lose. If someone’s down to talk, great. If someone’s not, that’s fine, it’s nothing personal. Once you’re ready to have a conversation with someone just reach out to them and ask to grab a coffee. People who are still people and humans will respond to it. Just go for it, don’t be scared. You stand in your own way