There’s little that make-up artist Chiao Li Hsu doesn’t do on instinct. “I work intuitively,” she tells me, recalling her time with Tyla on the set of British Vogue’s March cover shoot. “I’m always mixing colours and shades to create something totally new. For this shoot, I wasn’t thinking about references – I didn’t want to look back. I wanted to bring everything into the now.”
Rafael Pavarotti’s images speak for themselves, encapsulating the dynamic nature of popiano sensation Tyla. There’s her signature sliced brow – cut in by the musician herself with a straight blade – and an overlined contrast lip that brings the ’90s trend hurtling into the modern day.
Overlining, the popular make-up trend for drawing just outside the lip line to create the illusion of a fuller mouth, is actually one of the easiest places to make a glaring mistake, says Hsu. “Even one millimetre too far can look huge,” she cautions. “I start in the middle and work my way down for the top lip and for the bottom in the corner. But I’m always pausing and looking before continuing.” This is the trick to the make-up artist’s approach: patience. Because, for all of her striking, immediately eye-catching creations, Hsu is always pausing to step back and take in the whole. “You have to keep looking – especially with techniques like this.”
Tyla’s beauty evolution reflects how she has stepped fully into her identity, having learned to love her textured hair (described as “poofy” and “better straight” by school bullies) her skin tone and her whole self. “I really hated myself,” the star tells Funmi Fetto of her time at a largely white primary school in the March 2025 issue of British Vogue. “And then I went to high school, which was predominantly Black and cultured, and that’s where I actually grew to love myself and became really proud of who I am.”
Now, of course, the superstar in the making is riding high, and her palpable exuberance and joie de vivre is a theme of her Vogue shoot. As Hsu puts it: “She has amazing energy and she works incredibly hard.” The age of Tyla has commenced.
