Kalamakeup

🌵🏜️What the Playa Taught Me About the Weather💨☀️☔️

So many of you have been asking how Burning Man was this year, so here’s the real answer.

Before I went, I was expecting the worst — with that many people out in the desert, I figured the weather would hit hard. Turns out the city itself was fine. Way better than I braced for.
I brought rain boots just in case it rained and they did their job — my feet stayed completely protected the whole time. Until I actually had to take them off. The playa mud had built up so much on the bottom, it was basically like walking in concrete. We could barely move. It took us an hour and a half just to walk home, trying to peel this stuff off with every step. In the moment it was rough, but honestly — it’s one of the most memorable parts of the whole burn.
We also went through a whiteout, which is pretty normal out there. But we got really lucky with the rain — Burn night and Temple night both had completely clear skies, beautiful sunsets, some of the most amazing skies I’ve seen.
The sun wasn’t even as hot as I thought it’d be, because the wind kept moving through. And dry heat is just a different world from humidity — I actually find it way more manageable than the sticky heat we deal with at home. It wasn’t as bad as I expected, but I also came prepared. I kept my skin hydrated the whole time and made sure I was drinking electrolytes constantly, not just water. That’s really what got me through it.
Burning Man doesn’t go easy on you with the weather. If you prepare for it, it becomes part of the story instead of something that ruins it.

⏳Patience is Self-Care too🤲🏻

A student asked me if her skincare was “even working” after one week. My answer surprised her.

Skin takes about 28 days to renew itself.
One week tells you nothing. Six weeks tells you everything.
But this isn’t just a skincare lesson. It’s a life lesson I teach every student who walks into my class.

Self-care isn’t a quick fix. It’s trusting the process — even when you can’t see the results yet.
So next time you feel impatient with your skin, your goals, or yourself: give it six weeks, not seven days.

KALAMAKEUP

🧑🏻‍🎨🧑🏽‍🎨🧑‍🎨Thirty artists. One event. Zero room for miscommunication. 📞📲☎️🤳

Here’s what actually holds a team together.
A flawless gala or corporate event isn’t built the night of.
It’s built long before — through teamwork and leadership that clients never see, but always feel.

Two things I focus on with every team:
👂🏻Listen first, respond second. 🕊️
Before I brief anyone, I make sure I understand what each client and each artist actually needs. Miscommunication doesn’t start with talking — it starts with not listening.
Trust is built in small promises kept.

My team knows exactly what to expect from me and I know I can count on them. That’s not built overnight — it’s built event after event. When something goes wrong backstage and it always can — a team that already knows how to listen, adapt and trust each other is the difference between chaos and a flawless finish.

This is exactly why I’m expanding into corporate image coaching for banking and finance professionals — helping individuals use their physical presence as their first impression, so they can walk into any room and let confidence speak before they do.

Because whether it’s leading a team backstage at a gala dinner, or walking into a boardroom — preparation is what lets you perform under pressure.

More details coming soon. ✨

☀️Morning Skincare Routine (No Botox, No Fillers) 🎭

I have never had a single needle of Botox in my life.
My skin still improved.
Since the start of 2026, I’ve run one experiment on myself: a routine done only in the morning, minimum steps at night, no injectables, no fillers, no in-clinic facials. Just the right tools, in the right order, every single day.

Here’s exactly what’s on my counter.
1. Cleansing. Cold water, nothing aggressive. The skin builds its own barrier overnight — my job in the morning is to work with it, not strip it.
2. LED therapy — red and blue light, Qure. Five minutes under red light for circulation and collagen signalling, blue light where I need it for clarity. No downtime, no needles, just light doing what light has always done for skin.
3. Skin1004 ampoule. Concentrated, lightweight, absorbed in seconds. This is where the actual repair work happens.
4. Skin1004 toner. Locks in hydration before anything else goes on. Small step, does a lot of quiet work.
5. Biodance purple eye masks. Ten minutes, dedicated entirely to the eye area — the first place that shows fatigue and the last place most routines actually treat properly.
6. Skin1004 face mask or pads. The finishing layer. Calm, hydrated, ready for makeup or for nothing at all.
Ten to fifteen minutes. Same order. Every morning, without exception.
To be clear: I’m not against facial treatments. I’m against pain, and against putting something artificial where nothing needs to be. Light, hydration and lymphatic movement — these work with the skin’s own systems. That’s the line I hold, and it’s the one I’ve held for twenty-two years in this industry.

Consistency beat intervention. It usually does.
Which step are you missing from your own routine? 👇

⛴️ Twenty-five minutes on the water. Five of them belong to my face 😘

Every morning I take the ferry from Lamma to Central on my way to yoga. Somewhere around the halfway point, I put the phone down and start: cheek lifts, jaw release, brow smoothing, a long exhale through the eyes.

Five minutes. That’s it.

People assume that after 22 years of painting faces for a living, I must know a shortcut. I do — it just isn’t the one they expect. It isn’t a product. It’s circulation, muscle tone and showing up for yourself before you show up for anyone else.

Facial muscles behave like every other muscle in the body. Work them gently and consistently and they respond. Skip them for a month and they forget. Nothing about this is dramatic, which is exactly why it works.

Consistency is the whole method. It’s the same principle behind a yoga practice, a language, a business, a marriage. Small, unglamorous, repeated. Five minutes done daily will outperform an hour done occasionally, every time.

I believe in ageing gracefully and in natural beauty — not because I’m against anything, but because I’ve seen what a face looks like when the person inside it is rested, present and unhurried. No brush replicates that.

Try it for one week. One commute, five minutes, no phone. Then tell me what you notice.

What’s the five-minute habit you’d keep if you could only keep one? 👇

👴🏽🩵👴🏼 My father A.L.B.E.R.T. C.H.U. 🏊🏼‍♂️👨🏻‍🎨🎳🔉🎨🖌️🫟

He speaks maybe ten sentences a day. Every one of them means something. For 45 years, I have not stopped admiring this man.He’s an artist — Chinese calligraphy, Chinese paintings, a hand that’s been trained for decades. He’s a hi-fi enthusiast who can tell you, without looking, which speaker in the room is slightly out of balance. Some mornings he swims before the rest of us are awake. Other days he walks to the beach alone, plays golf at the public courses, or shows up for lawn bowling with friends here and abroad — more competitive at seventy than most people are at twenty-five.
And he is, without question, the quietest man I know.
A silent, introverted type and when you connect with him and he opens up. He’ll tell you his stories. His passions. His wisdom.
When my mother went through her illness — one of the hardest periods our family has faced — it was my father, saying almost nothing, who held everything together. No speeches. Just presence, every single day, without fail. That’s when I understood: his seriousness and his playfulness were never two different sides of him. They were always the same steadiness, just worn differently depending on what the day needed.
He has a saying he’s repeated to me and my twin sister Kalo since we were children:
「船到橋頭自然直」— when the boat arrives at the pier, it will turn straight.
Everything I know about staying calm under pressure, about doing the work quietly instead of announcing it, about showing up for people without being asked, about respecting the person beside you the way he has always respected my mother — I learned it watching a man who rarely raised his voice and never had to.
I don’t get to see him often. But I’m grateful every day that he’s happy, healthy and still so young at heart. Thank you, Dad — for the presence, the patience and the wisdom, even in ten sentences a day. Happy to have him and this saying, with me every day I pick up a brush.
Who taught you the thing you didn’t understand until years later?

🍦 Somewhere between a gelato and a 500-year-old fresco, I remembered why I do this job. 🖼️

This June, I flew to Italy for a wedding and came home with more than a stamp in my passport. Trastevere at golden hour. Cacio e pepe made by hands that have made it ten thousand times. Bridal parties getting ready in a room with ceilings older than most countries.

Here is what books can’t show you unless you experience it personally:
You learn skin in a different light when you’ve studied Caravaggio’s use of shadow that same morning. You learn colour differently after a plate of carbonara reminds you that the best things are usually three or four ingredients, done with total conviction. You learn people differently when you watch a Roman waiter greet a stranger like an old friend — warmth first, transaction second.

Twenty-two years in, I still think the best makeup artists are the ones who stay curious about everything that isn’t makeup. Culture, history, food, the way light hits a 15th-century wall. It all ends up on the brush eventually.

Grateful doesn’t quite cover it. I’m already looking at next summer’s calendar and hoping Europe is on it again.

If you’re planning a destination wedding in Italy or anywhere in Europe next season — let’s talk. 🇮🇹

🔟📜Burning Man operates on 10 principles and the one that lives rent-free in my heart is Radical Self-Expression. 💥🖼️🎨

Here is the truth I learned in the desert:
Self-expression is not vanity. It is survival.

When we hide who we are, we starve our souls.
When we express who we are through art, through fashion, through makeup, we feed our spirit.

Why is this important? Because you cannot be free if you are constantly pretending to be someone else.

Burning Man is a place where the societal rules are flipped upside down. Here, the weirdest version of you is the most celebrated version of you.

Why does this matter in our “real lives”?

Because we spend too much time waiting for permission to be ourselves. We wait for the trend to be approved, for the outfit to be “in style,” or for our peers to validate our choices.

Burning Man taught me that permission comes from within.

As an artist, this is why I create. I want to help you find that version of yourself that doesn’t care about the algorithm or the critics. The version that just wants to shine.

Never dull your sparkle to fit into someone else’s dull narrative.

I believe makeup isn’t about covering up flaws. It’s about amplifying the energy you want to bring to the world. It’s about radical self-acceptance.

You don’t need to go to Burning Man to practice this.
You can practice it today.

Be loud. Be colorful. Be weird. Be unapologetic. Be you.