The Celebrity Glam Teams Behind Sephora’s Biggest Fall Launches
There are some invisible hands in your Sephora cart. These fingers and palms have cradled, molded, massaged, and brushed some of the most well-known faces and hair for decades, and now they’ve created their own lines—testing hundreds of formulas, handpicking the best shades, and pouring their expertise into every creation. This fall, you’ll be able to find debut collections from hairstylist Chris McMillan and makeup artists Hung Vanngo and Mary Phillips, with products that they promise will perform. “We’re doing this every day on the most famous people in the world,” Phillips says. “We know what works and what doesn’t work.”
The Master of DramaThe names in Vanngo’s signature makeup line, Hung Vanngo Beauty, tell his story: Phanat Nikhom is a peach-brown lipstick—and the name of the refugee camp in Thailand where he spent three years after fleeing Vietnam. MaMe, a light-pink lip color, is a portmanteau of two Vietnamese words for “Mom,” while the blush Single Mother honors her as well. Wild Rose refers to a nickname for the Canadian province where Vanngo spent his formative years thinking about his Wildest Dreams, which included hoping for his Big Break, working with Award Winner(s), and his First Cover. “I want everything to be meaningful. I could have [just done] cool French names or something like that, but it wouldn’t have meant anything to me. That’s not what this is about.”
Creating his own line had always been a dream, especially after working with Selena Gomez, Julianne Moore, and Cindy Crawford (his rich use of color and artful blending have been deemed the “Hung Vann Glow”). His collection includes punchy one-swipe lipsticks, velvety blushes, creamy bronzers, and eyeshadow palettes. The shades are extra-pigmented and sumptuous, the Vanngo trademark. An eyeshadow isn’t just brown—it’s the richest, sultriest chocolate-brown you’ve ever seen (and you probably have—blended into Scarlett Johansson’s lash line).
Despite Vanngo’s starry client base, “this line isn’t just for makeup artists,” he says. Running a successful YouTube channel, where he hosts tutorials and personally responds to comments, has taught him what viewers want. The result is a line that he says is “editorial, but also not [too] crazy for everyday people. I don’t want to come out with a makeup line with an attitude that is like, ‘I’m doing this. I don’t care if people like it or not.’ I want people to feel, touch, and get excited.”
Before Phillips was making Hailey Bieber gleam, she was a teenager in her local Thrifty’s trying to color-match drugstore eyeshadows and lipstick shades with the ones in Making Faces, a book by Kevyn Aucoin. Aucoin’s contouring and shadowing inspired her to devise underpainting, her signature technique, in which she applies multiple thin lines of color corrector, contour, and highlighter before foundation—“structure,” as she calls it. The “before” would sometimes freak people out. “I don’t know what you’re doing right now, but this is not what I signed up for,” she recalls clients saying. But she always won them over with the “after”: a softly defined, effortless-looking face.
The transformation from stripy tiger to glowy, Bieber-like skin is the stuff that TikTok is made for, and when underpainting went viral two years ago, it served as license to fulfill a long-held goal of a makeup line. Inspired by the homemade underpainting kits she used to give her clients, m.ph by Mary Phillips is for “everybody who wants to elevate their makeup,” Phillips says. One palette holds five squares of underpainting basics, creamy and blendable formulas that disappear into cheekbones and jawlines. Although it may initially seem complicated, the method lessens the need for foundation, and those who try it are pleasantly surprised by how sheer and pretty it looks. “I love when people are given the option for their real skin to shine through,” she says.
Other m.ph products include the Overliner Lip Liner Pencil, which comes in a variety of flattering nudes. For that perfect popsicle-red lip, the Lip Ciggy Hydrating Lipstick Balm offers a transparent veil of color, with cheeky names like First Base and Love Bites. “That’s the kind of look I love,” Phillips says. “Like it’s makeup, but not really makeup.”
By the time McMillan was a senior in high school, he had already clocked 1,600 hours of beauty school. Before he turned 30, he had developed “The Rachel”—a haircut so iconic that it remains maybe the only female hairstyle in the last 30 years referred to by just a first name. McMillan never had a calling to develop a brand, he says, because “it’s just a lot of fucking work.” But he kept getting one question over and over from his salon clients (and yes, Jennifer Aniston still comes in): “Oh my God, I love my hair, Chris. How can I do this myself?” So he decided to create “products that make my life easier as a hairdresser.”
The result is that he’s managed to bring mousse back. His version, as thick and fluffy as aerosol whipped cream, is selling out at Sephora nationwide. With an edited capsule collection of products, McMillan has refined other basics, too: hair spray (which he always has in his right back pocket), a dry texture spray, a hair gel, a styling balm, and a blow-dry spray. He didn’t want to create some amorphous mystery product that’s a challenge to use: “You already are 50 percent, if not more, of knowing what it is [for].”
From Chris himself, a few tips: For his recognizable “controlled chaos” look of touchable yet sexy hair, start with a clean, fresh blowout. “Jennifer doesn’t [come into my chair] with dirty hair,” he says. “We wash it, blow it out, and then make it look sexy and messy.” Section your hair to apply product, and take your time. “I’ve always liked hair that moves,” he says. “Even at beauty school, when we had to do wet sets on our dolls, I always put them upside down, shook them out, sprayed them upside down, and flipped them up. They always were a little messy.”
This story appears in the November 2025 issue of ELLE.
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