“In The Chair” spotlights the incredible hairstylists and makeup artists in our community who are giving us major inspiration. Each week, they discuss their personal beauty and career journeys, what they’ve learned from their clients, and their top glam tips.
“Beauty is different for everyone,” MAC Cosmetics’s director of makeup artistry Romero Jennings tells ESSENCE. “[It] is an external presentation that reflects how we view ourselves.” Growing up in the seventies, however, his earliest recognition of beauty was not of himself, but of his mother. Before going to work, “she used her peach frosted lipstick on her lips and cheek as her blush to save money,” he recalls. From that age, he says he began to understand the power of beauty.
With his father from Jamaica and mother, Panamanian, the Jamaica-born makeup artist first started his career in an unexpected location: Japan. “I assisted makeup artists in Japan and then came back to New York and started doing music videos back in the nineties,” he says. From Bobby Brown and CeCe Peniston to Mary J. Blige and Grace Jones, Jennings had a hand in a number of celebrity trends we still reference in beauty 35 years later.
Then, he started at MAC. In the nineties, MAC Cosmetics was the new kid on the block. “I was actually on set and a makeup artist said to me, ‘there’s a new company that’s in New York and they give you free products’,” he recalls. Now, 33 years in, “I’ve never felt more relevant than I do right now.”
Read on for more about Jennings’s favorite products, makeup myths, and how to make your makeup last all summer long.
What He Loves Most About Makeup Artistry:
“What brings me joy is when I finish doing the makeup and I step back for the first moment and see it in total. I get so excited thinking, ‘oh my goodness, I just finished that.’ It’s all like blurs and smudges, but then you clean it up, then you refine it and it becomes something.”
His Current Favorite Products:
“The most used product in my kit is MAC’s Hyper Real Serumizer. Back in the nineties, I was using some kind of cream, which meant it was greasy and it was heavy. But with technology, you have something that’s going to work with the makeup and it’ll hydrate, protect, and strengthen the skin over time.
I [also] swear by the Hyper Real Serumizer Eye Treatment; people ask me my age all the time. I should use more sunscreen. I don’t. But honestly, hydrating your face with moisturizer is really important. At night, I slug my face with an oil, like a vitamin E oil. I feel like that movement of the skin is really stimulating collagen and helping adhere the skin back to the bone.”
His Favorite Makeup Look:
“Romero Jennings, as an artist, is not a minimalist. I love all genres of makeup. Last fashion week, I did a show and it was 1920s Shanghai, so we had to block brows out with glue sticks and draw skinny, round brows on the models. They were all in finger waves. And it was this beautiful purple and pink and violet eyeshadow that was big and bold, and it was like reminiscence of a Dior show back in the nineties.”
His Top ESSENCE Festival Makeup Tip:
“I start with the brows. I feel like there’s structure there and many people just brush that up and leave it. But, I feel like if you have nothing else on—a little mascara, no skin, some lip something—if the brows are in place, that looks good. You feel elevated, you feel awake, you feel that you have expression.
Mascara is everything. I love curling a lash and adding a couple coats of mascara. I think it really helps to open and wake up the eye. Honestly, I don’t think anybody needs [a big] amount of foundation. My joy is trying to make the skin look transparent. As for keeping makeup in place, I swear by the MAC Fix+ setting spray and the MAC Studio Fix powder to lock everything in place.”
A Makeup Myth He’d Like to Debunk:
“Lash curlers destroying lashes is a myth. Honestly, if you drop your lash curler a thousand times, then maybe it’s because you’ve damaged the mechanism, so it’s time to change it. I really love using a half lash curler. No lash is left behind when you use that. You have to be really mindful and careful as if you’re combing your hair. A lash curler can make all the difference.”
What He’s Learned From His Clients:
“I think what I’ve learned from my clients over the years is compassion, patience, all the things that you need that you would love a client to do. I’ve had so many people be so respectful to me in that way that in return, it’s made me that way as an artist. Living in Japan also has helped that too, because of being reserved and being mindful of people’s presence and aura.”
The ESSENCE Festival of Culture™ presented by Coca-Cola® will take place July 3-6. For more information and updates on the festival, visit our website and follow us on social media @ESSENCEFest on X, Facebook, and Instagram.