“The clean girl is dead!”: Sam Visser on a decade of high glam, full watt beauty

It’s a disappointingly grey afternoon in Madrid but Sam Visser​’s mind is on a bright spring day in New York in 2019. ​“I did my first cover then and it was for THE FACE!” he says, smiling on a sofa in Madrid’s swanky EDITION hotel. He’s referring to Lily-Rose Depp’s issue that saw the actress dripping in Chanel and holding a squeal-inducing white bunny in a turquoise bedroom. ​“I ended up loving that shoot so much because at that time people were like, if you move to New York, you’re not gonna get to do any makeup,” he says, citing 2019’s general appetite for stripped-back faces. ​“So for my first fashion cover, I decided I was going to do blue eyes [on Lily].”

In fairness, the 26-year-old has never been one for trends. Instead, Visser’s been carving out a signature, high glamour aesthetic since the start of his career at the precocious age of 16, when he’d head over to the Kardashian house in Beverly Hills to do Kris Jenner’s daily full beat.

Since then, he’s gone on to paint the faces of stars like Amelia Gray and Rihanna as well as the all-star supermodel lineup that featured in Doja Cat’s Gorgeous music video. Now, the makeup artist has turned his talents to YSL Beauty where he’s currently serving as their latest Global Makeup Artist.

Flying in from LA for the weekend, Visser is in town for a block party the brand are hosting at the historic Café Comercial to celebrate the launch of its new Loveshine Candy Glaze lip gloss. The first in a global series, the events offer an alternative take on nightlife, kicking off at around 4pm and wrapping up before midnight.

Two hours before the party kicked off we sat down to chat early 2000s Tumblr, the key to a smokey eye and the one big lesson he learnt the hard way.

Hi Sam, you were kicking against the bare-faced trend in 2019, where do you stand on the clean girl aesthetic in 2026?

The clean girl is dead! She died again! The clean girl era never really affected me, it was never something that I felt super inspired by. And I’ve always been somebody to push daring makeup. I never want to push someone into a place where they’re not comfortable anymore with how they look, but especially on a shoot or a carpet where the boundary can be pushed and they’re willing to try something new. I will always try to give a hint of something exciting. I don’t have anything against the clean girl but I’m just not one of them. I’m a dirty girl, a smokey girl.

When you were growing up, what were the makeup trends that surrounded you?

Emo was huge. I went to school with so many emo kids, with crazy gages and flat ironed hair – the eyeliner was out of control. And I loved it. That was not my style. I grew up in California. I was a wannabe surfer kid. But I all my friends were the ones that were brave enough to take that risk themselves. And now I’m still very pared back in my own personal style, but I still like to be surrounded by interesting people that are brave enough to wear something [bold].

At the beginning of your career, people like Sharon Gault and David Hernandez took you under their wing. Is that something that you try to do now?

I don’t know what I would do without mentors in my life. I think that, like, they’re so imperative to a creative career as a creative person. Though i don’t mentor anyone right now, I genuinely love giving advice to people, because I was given so much good advice. And I think that in this field, you just have to share what you know. It’s a wild west out there. A lot of my mentors weren’t even makeup artists. There were people like photographers or directors and I think that sometimes it takes people seeing something special in you from another.

Is there an approach to work that your mentors taught you, that you would instill in a mentee?

For so many years, I was just like, work, work, work and I still am addicted to working. I love it. But I’ve had real periods in my life where I just needed some time but I don’t think I ever gave myself permission to take it. But my best friend and one of my biggest mentors taught me that’s it’s okay to take a week off every once in a while. And once you do that and give yourself that permission to take a moment is when the good stuff comes.

I saw an image from (makeup artist) Jo Baker’s Insta recently of a moodboard that consisted of a roasted honey glazed chicken, do you ever have outlandish images on your moodboards?

Sometimes I will pull such weird references that I tell my team, you gotta squint your eyes or maybe just…shut them completely to see the vision! I was showing somebody a That’s So Raven image recently and I was like just don’t look at it too literally! That’s a big part of what we do. I love when you get to that point with collaborators, when you can show really weird things and they will still trust you.

Is there a product that you’re really attached to that’s now been discontinued?

The Kevyn Aucoin medium lip pencil. It was made in the ​’90s, it’s a color that so many brands now make a version of but it’s like that slightly grey, contour for the lips. There was something about it that was so good. But I think it’s more of a sentimental thing because I just love Kevyn Aucoin.

What are your top tips for a smokey eye?

Don’t just dip into the shadow and then do the eye, dip the brush, into the eyeshadow, and then work it into the back of your hand or a tissue, something where the powder can work into the brush a bit and then it doesn’t create all this fallout. And that way you can also have a much softer finish when you apply it onto your eye. Smokey eyes and dark eyes in general can be very intimidating, so you have to ease into it a little bit and just blend. You can even take blush brushes to blend, and it will really create a soft, hazy effect.

What’s a piece of makeup tech that you’re excited about this year?

The whole Love Nude line from YSL, the lip liner is an incredible formula. It’s one of those products you can just put it on once in the morning and wear it through the day. It doesn’t come off. And then another one is that we have a cushion foundation coming to the west. The west is really obsessed with K‑beauty cushion foundation and this is a product that is formulated like a Western foundation, but in a cushion form. It’s really about the idea of having something that you can travel with on the go that gives you that flawless cushion texture which I don’t think you can find in a normal liquid foundation.