Naomi Smalls’s 70-Step Guide to Full-On Glamazon

The drag queen takes us through her stage-ready skin care and makeup routine, resulting in a perfectly contoured, doll-like complexion.

Naomi Smalls’s 70-Step Guide to Full-On Glamazon

For Naomi Smalls, the beauty transformation from Davis Heppenstall to the individualized doll that is Naomi is born from years of experimentation—but always with a similar vibe in mind. “I remember seeing the John Galliano for Dior, I think it was ready-to-wear 2008 collection? Where the models were these like, Barbarellas, big hair, and I think that seeing that really fascinated me,” says Smalls. “She’s like, out of this world, but not like an alien. Like, a glamorous alien. She doesn’t exist. She’s a doll. And that’s what I always want to look like when I use makeup.”

Smalls, who got her start on season eight of Ru Paul’s Drag Race, embraces a go-big-or-go-home approach to drag—an ethos evidenced in her stage name, a coupling of Naomi Campbell and Biggie Smalls. “I landed on Naomi Smalls because it’s like based off of two people who are just really good at what they do, no one can come for them, and I have always had a gravitation to that unapologetic attitude,” says Smalls, who is living that truth with an impressive 70-step routine tailored to her show-stopping preferences. Smalls begins with an essential skin-care routine—“It’s really important for me to take care of my skin because I want my skin to look as smooth as it appears when it’s all FaceTuned and Photoshopped and posted to the Gram.”—before donning her first wig cap and getting down to business.

“Makeup is not a game to me. It’s not something that I choose to wear to have fun. Makeup for me is like, how I make my money, and how I express my art,” says Smalls, who begins by drying and gluing sideburns, noting that the art of drag “some hardcore punk rock shit.” A set of colored contacts are a crucial step for character, as Smalls prefers that no one knows what she’s thinking during a performance. “I used to only wear like, blonde and blue eyes because I wanted to be the doll, I wanted to be Barbie,” says Smalls, donning brown contacts. “Maybe Barbie’s not made in every single color and every single fashion, but bitch, I’ll be the Black Barbie that I’ve always wanted to be.”

After setting the edge glue, applying vinyl tape, and putting on another wig cap, Smalls brushes up her brows and applies Anastasia Beverly Hills DIPBROW Pomade before carving and framing them with a duet of concealers to striking effect. A bevy of painstakingly selected concealers and foundations are artfully applied into different areas of Smalls’s complexion, layered in learned and perfected patterns and baking in phases for an immaculately blended look. “I’m all about a complexion moment with drag,” says Smalls while expertly highlighting, contouring, bronzing, and blushing. “I wasn’t always that way, but I like dimension. I like depth. And I like working from lighter to darker.” Another turn to the brow (“You will not catch me wearing makeup either in drag or out of drag without the Glossier Boy Brow.”) is followed by swirls of eyeshadow, liquid liner, and faux lashes, those further integrated with a pull of liner at their base. Ample mascara (on top and bottom lashes) demand balance in a high-impact lip moment which is achieved with an ombré MAC Lip Pencil in Chestnut, Sephora Cream Lip Stain Liquid Lipstick in Pretty Auburn, NARS Lipstick in Raw Seduction, and clear and tinted lip glosses.

And finally: “Naomi, she loves a wig moment.” Another round of vinyl setting tape, followed by wig tape, makes way for a long, sky-reaching raven mane, secured and camouflaged with wig glue brushed atop the lace front and obscured by powder concealer. “As corny as it sounds to say out loud, confidence really is your best accessory,” says Smalls, who finishes with a flourish of body shimmer and oil, punctuated by a requisite spritz of perfume. “So whatever makes you feel like the most confident, hone in on it and own it and customize it to you, because that’s what people are going to be super super super impressed with—seeing something that nobody else has.”