TikTok’s Dixie and Charli D’Amelio on their new Gen-Z makeup line, self-care and their hopes for the future

TikTok’s biggest stars, Connecticut-born sisters Dixie and Charli D’Amelio have a brand-new venture. Best known for their viral dance videos and humorous confessionals, model-singer Dixie, 18, and dancer Charli, 16, have a combined 102.9 million followers—and now they’re turning their attention to makeup. Teaming up with beauty brand Morphe, the sisters have been tapped to help launch Morphe 2, a sub-brand that’s all about keeping makeup light and simple. So far, the collection includes a hydrating tint that comes in 20 different shades, a face and eye gloss, subtle lip oils and jelly eye shimmers that are ideal for summer—all perfectly aligned with the girls’ natural approach to beauty.

We sat down with the sisters over Zoom to talk about self-care, how TikTok has changed our perception of beauty and their hopes for the future.

How far does your interest in makeup date back to?

Charli: “I started doing competition dances when I was five and for that you need a full face of the glam makeup, so I’ve been doing makeup for a while. My mum would do mine and I would do some of it when I could.”

Dixie: “I started doing light makeup in middle school. I never learned [how] to do any dramatic look, but I just always loved makeup.”

How would you describe your approach to beauty today?

Charli: “We’re into the more natural tints instead of a full-coverage type of thing. Natural brows, that sort of stuff.”

Dixie: “A lot of times when we get our makeup done, they end up covering our freckles and I would always wipe off my makeup. We want to show natural beauty. I also care a lot about skincare and have a partnership with [teen skincare brand] Clear Start. Everything we love to do, we do it in lighter amounts.”

How would you characterise your relationship with beauty? Has it always been positive?

Charli: “You go through times where you feel super confident and sometimes you don’t. You don’t want to put a label on yourself and be like, ‘I’m super this’ or ‘I’m super that’. Working to be the most confident we can be is something that we want for ourselves . We want to show other people that this is how you should feel about yourself.”

Where do you think that confidence comes from? Is it something that you’ve acquired over time?

Dixie: “Confidence comes and goes. Obviously when you wake up in the morning, you’re not the most confident, you’re not feeling your best. But you can do things to make yourself feel more confident. I’ll wash my face or do something with my hair or put a little makeup on. It’s just very personal and people go about it in different ways.”

Charli: “It’s more about the vibes. If it’s a happy vibe, I’m going to feel more confident. It’s not necessarily something I have to do to myself to make me feel more confident.”

What are your go-to beauty tricks?

Charli: “For me, it’s about making the makeup that I am wearing super natural, but adding a little bit of highlighter to give it a glow—under my brows, in the corners of my eyes. Something that makes it pop.”

How do you think TikTok has changed our perception of beauty?

Charli: “For a long time, on social media it was always about a full face of glam makeup, which is what most teenage girls like us always saw and looked up to. So it’s cool to see the narrative change a little bit and show people that yes, you can look beautiful with full glam, but you can also look beautiful with little to no makeup.

“It’s showing that there are so many different things you can do and they are all just ways to express yourself and have fun. With us, we do have some people that support us that are around our age or younger, and maybe they’re going to school and they can’t always wear a full face of makeup. A natural look has been normalised.”

Dixie: “Everyone is just so comfortable on TikTok. Everyone can feel beautiful because everyone is uplifting towards everyone else. I like making videos where I’ve just got out of bed. This is how I am, I’m not going to be like, ‘Oh, I woke up and my hair is perfect and I have no spots.’ I’m not going to lie about that because I have a lot of young followers.”

Obviously you guys spend a large portion of time online. Do you ever find that there’s a pressure of always having to look good or be switched on?

Charli: “That’s the awesome part about the shift in the narrative because you can be wearing sweatpants and a sweatshirt, and make a video. You don’t have to be on with a full face of makeup and camera-ready hair—you can post however you want to look and no one’s going to see a problem with it because we’re all teenagers. We all wear sweatpants.”

What do you guys do for self-care?

Charli: “Dance is a huge part of [self-care]. It helps me clear my mind and get out any worries or anxieties.”

Dixie: “Working out helps me feel a lot better when I’m stressed out.”

How does TikTok play into your self-care routine?

Dixie: “There’s always something that comes up where it’s like, ‘How to deal with anxiety’ or ‘How to deal with stress,’ and [they usually have] five tips. So you can just try them out then [and there] and it’s very helpful.”

Does creating content ever get stressful?

Dixie: “I just don’t think it feels like work. We’re still doing videos to songs we love and trends we’re into. So it’s not stressful. We don’t schedule posts. There’s no, ‘You need to do this right now’ or post however many times a day. It’s whatever we want.”

Let’s talk about your collaboration with Morphe. How did that come about?

Charli: “Someone reached out to our team and once we found out about it, we were obviously extremely excited. It’s so amazing that such a great brand wanted us to be the face of a collection that describes and shows how we are and what we want. We wouldn’t have done a makeup deal [otherwise] because it’s always full glam and that’s not who we are. So when we were presented with the collection, it was perfect for us.”

What’s your favourite product from the collection?

Charli: “Mine is the Wondertint Cheek and Lip Mousse. It’s perfect. You just apply it with your fingers and it’s blendable on your skin.”

Dixie: “Mine is the Hint Hint Skin Tint, which is so light that you can still see your freckles underneath but it also gives you coverage.”

OK, last question: what are you most hopeful for for the future?

Dixie: “We don’t know what’s to come because our whole life has changed and it hasn’t even been a year yet. So knowing that we have endless possibilities of where we can take this is so exciting. It’s helped us mature a lot and become better workers.”

Charli: “Just continuing to spread the message of positivity and kindness. Hopefully, some people will listen and see that that’s always the way to go.”

Also read:

5 celebrity makeup artists reveal their favourite foundation application technique

How 15-year-old Charli D’Amelio became TikTok’s biggest star just by being herself

5 fun beauty tricks from TikTok that will help you kill time while social distancing