Multi-use formulation and full-range shade thinking
Danessa Myricks
American makeup artist, self-taught, founder of Danessa Myricks Beauty, known for multi-use formulas that work across every depth.
Written by Lamyaa Aissi, a working makeup artist in Casablanca. This is a technique analysis, not a biography — what this artist changed about how a face is built, and what survives on a real client.
Self-taught, and it shows in the products
Artists who learned outside a formal system tend to build differently, because they were never told which product a category is supposed to belong to. Her range is full of things that refuse to sit in one: a balm that works as base, blush and lid colour; pigments that behave as liner, shadow or cheek depending on what they are mixed with.
That is how an experienced artist actually works out of a kit — one product doing four jobs because it is the one already in your hand. Most brands build the opposite way, because four products sell better than one.
Why a smaller kit is a better kit
On location — a hotel room, a family house, a venue with one usable mirror — the constraint is never how many products exist. It is what you can carry up the stairs and find quickly under time pressure.
A kit of forty considered items outperforms a kit of two hundred, because you know all forty. Every product you have never used is dead weight that also slows down finding the one you need.
Shade range as a design decision, not a marketing one
Ranges built from the extremes inward behave differently from ranges extended outward after launch. When the deepest and fairest shades are designed at the same time as the middle, the undertones stay consistent across the whole set and shades can be mixed.
When deeper shades are added later, they are frequently the same base with more brown dropped in, which is why they so often go grey or orange. For an artist working across the Moroccan range, being able to mix two shades and get a predictable third is the difference between matching a client and approximating her.
The lesson for anyone building a kit
Buy for what a product can do, not for what it is called. A cream in the right colour family will do the work of a blush, a lip and a lid colour, and the face will look more coherent for it — because it is, literally, the same colour holding the look together.
Questions
How many products does a professional kit need?
Fewer than most people assume. Forty considered items you know well outperform two hundred you do not, particularly on location where speed and what you can carry are the real constraints.
Why do deeper foundation shades often look grey or orange?
Usually because they were added after launch — the same base with more brown in it — rather than designed alongside the rest of the range. Ranges built from the extremes inward keep undertone consistent and can be mixed predictably.
The other artists
Booking in Casablanca
Bridal, editorial and special-occasion makeup, on location across Casablanca and Morocco.