Unpolished, visceral, and human, Gutierrez’s approach to beauty is helping us understand what it means to be beautiful today.
In a cover shoot for The Cut last fall, Marcelo Gutierrez did something unusual. He let 49-year-old Chloë Sevigny appear on camera with virtually no makeup. Only weeks later, he sent Madonna to the Met Gala with a matte complexion and a single bold wine-hued lip as her armor. At 30, Gutierrez has become the go-to makeup visionary for fashion’s new vanguard of icons and iconoclasts. The New York–based artist’s clientele ranges from Gen-Z muses to music legends – Lily-Rose Depp, Paloma Elsesser, Rosalía, Madonna – but his approach remains the same. He’s known to begin sessions by asking how a client wants to feel that day, guiding his work by emotion and identity rather than a paint-by-numbers playbook. Faces, to Gutierrez, aren’t blank canvases to obscure but portraits to amplify.
Marcelo Gutierrez beauty journey from childhood fascination to fashion’s inner circle has been anything but conventional. Born in Colombia, he immigrated to Florida with his family at age seven and nurtured his artistic streak through painting and performance art. By his late teens, he was selling his artwork and staging performance pieces in San Francisco, but a restless urge for creative freedom pulled him to New York City. At 20, he dropped out of college, arrived in NYC, and threw himself into the city’s underground nightlife. The club scene became his unofficial atelier – night after night of wild looks and self-expression that taught him how color and texture could create personas. “I was clubbing and hustling literally nonstop every night in New York,” he told Elle in 2024, describing those hungry early years. It was during this time that Gutierrez began to see faces as canvases, makeup as both mask and message. He didn’t have a clear roadmap for breaking into the industry, but he had instinct, drive, and an insatiable curiosity about people and style.
“Sometimes the narrative in makeup comes with the way it’s worn over time, you know?… It’s less about when you put it on and more about the story behind it”
– Marcelo Gutierrez for The Face, 2024.
In a twist of fate, the fashion world’s reigning makeup legend took notice of the young artist hustling on the New York scene. Pat McGrath – the iconic British makeup artist known for her extravagantly creative runway looks – saw Gutierrez’s potential and became an early mentor. Up to that point, Gutierrez had been experimenting freely, not fully convinced that the buttoned-up fashion industry would embrace his offbeat approach. But McGrath’s validation lit a fire. He dove headlong into makeup as a career, applying the same intensity he once gave to painting. It worked. “Once I started – after McGrath convinced me to – I really took it on aggressively and went for it, and it worked out,” he told Elle.
By 2022, Gutierrez’s work was splashed on the cover of Vogue (painting pop icon Dua Lipa in a now-famous editorial) and spotted on the Met Gala red carpet. One particularly talked-about project came in early 2023 with an avant-garde Marc Jacobs editorial featuring New York nightlife legends sprawled on an absurdly long couch – Gutierrez’s edgy makeup looks for the cast helped the surreal shoot go viral online. Each of these moments, from high art editorials to celebrity transformations, has further cemented Gutierrez as a creative force defining contemporary beauty.
Lily-Rose Depp has also become a canvas for Gutierrez’s philosophy. The actress-model’s signature look – fresh skin, smoky eyes that seem slept-in, and a casual swipe of gloss – manages to feel effortless yet intentional. As her friend and go-to artist, Gutierrez helps craft the image of a Chanel muse who refuses to be lacquered into perfection. Depp even wrote the introduction to Nothing Precious (Gutierrez’s 2024 art book), noting that his makeup chair leaves you “feeling more yourself” rather than like a painted doll.
Published in late 2024, Gutierrez’s new book Nothing Precious “celebrates unpolished beauty and the spirit of New York” – a deliberate counterpoint to the industry’s Eurocentric ideals. Gutierrez has said he was driven by a desire “to celebrate the talent in New York City, the tribe I belong to” rather than chase the usual glossy perfection. Accordingly, the book’s portraits run the gamut from avant-garde to almost bare. In one image, supermodel Joan Smalls is streaked with broad, painterly swaths of color. Another shows underground muse Jazzelle Zanaughtti in geisha-inspired face paint, and Madonna’s daughter Lourdes Leon appears wearing nothing but dewy skin. By presenting beauty in all its grit and whimsy, Gutierrez positions makeup not as a mask, but as narrative.
“The future of beauty has no margins, only provocations”
– Marcelo Gutierrez for Dazed, 2021.
For Gutierrez, a smudge of last night’s eyeliner or a stray sparkle isn’t a flaw – it’s a feature. He has built a career on this “lived-in” approach to glamour, finding beauty in what others might airbrush away. Gutierrez shows that a person can look extraordinary by refusing to cover up what makes them unique. That might mean turning an icon’s face into a canvas of rebellion or simply letting a star’s real skin shine through. In a culture finally catching up to the idea that makeup can be transformative art, Gutierrez stands at the forefront, brush in hand, ready to paint the next chapter in living color.
