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This past Friday, Symone, aka The Ebony Enchantress, was named the winner of the 13th season of RuPaul’s Drag Race, and the experience has helped her take her beauty game to a whole new level—and pace. “When I first started doing drag, it would take me about four hours just to do the makeup part,” she says. “The Race—it is truly a race. It’s in the name, it’s not a joke, we ain’t playing around here, okay? So I can do my makeup now in about an hour, hour and a half. They don’t call it the Olympics of drag for nothing.” Symone notes that the expedited process has helped hone her muscle memory and perfect her application. “Once you have it you got it, and baby there’s no mistaking, I got it.”
The crowned queen likes her skin care routine well-honed—“I keep it real simple, real clean, real cute, and effective”—relying on Sunday Riley products, her mainstay being the brand’s Good Genes All-in-One Lactic Acid Treatment, followed by a touch of moisturizer from Tata Harper. “Being a full-time queen, you have to take care of your skin,” she explains. “It’s the base of everything, and you’re putting makeup on it everyday for hours on end. So I make sure she is stunning.”
“Brown eyes are lovely and all, but The Enchantress, she got to come on through!” says Symone, donning a pair of colored contacts. A coat of primer and foundation serve as a base for a trio of concealers, each tapped and blended for strategic brightness, a contour stick delivering carved cheekbones and immaculate definition. A favored pot of concealer from Kevin Aucoin provides extra effulgence under eyes and at the Cupid’s bow. Brows are created from a palette and pomade while a cadre of well-placed powders bake the rest of the face. “I swear if I’m ever late, this is why,” says Symone, painstakingly delineating.
Eyeshadow primer offers a buildable base for a series of shimmers layered in pinks and purples (“the color of royalty, if you did not know”), the colorful look as playful as it is powerful. A coupling of kohl and liquid liner team for a geometric cat-eye, with a sky-reaching, feathery lash furthering the drama. More blending and a fluffy brush to end the baking round out the technicalities, and Symone finishes the look with highlight and a lined, glossed lip.
“I never really wanted to look like anyone else, I wanted to look like myself,” says Symone, who steps offscreen before revealing her “full regalia,” which includes a wig of blonde cornrows and diamanté additions. “I think that’s important when you do drag. I think it’s important to find what makes you you, and what makes you shine and sparkle.”
Filmed at Waldorf Astoria Beverly Hills
