Meet Emily Wood, 2025's Breakout Makeup Artist and Instagram’s Scribbling "Face Decorator"

Breaking Beauty Podcast

Dear Media, Jill Dunn and Carlene Higgins

Jilldunn, Arts, Beautyeditors, Style541811, Beautyexpert, Beauty, Carlenehiggins, Fashion, Society & Culture, Magazineeditors, Fashion & Beauty

4.7 • 954 Ratings

🗓️ 12 November 2025

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Emily Wood is the answer to, “What comes next after clean beauty?” The makeup artist’s viral, on-the-go, freestyle bold makeup videos (no mirror required!) that you simply can’t scroll past.

The UK-born artist is undoubtedly a creative force to watch in 2026 and beyond (ELLE UK just anointed Emily as one of the game-changing women changing the industry) and her editorial work has been featured in Grazia and British Vogue. Brands are taking note too: she’s collaborated with 19/99 Beauty, Glow Recipe and Cult Beauty.

In this episode Emily opens up about:

How being neurodiverse has been the key to Emily intuitive makeup technique, and self-regulation
How she gets her “scribble” and “smear” techniques to look good on the move
How to experiment with colour in a way that will work for you
Why she’s saying no to “butter girl” fall
The dream makeup artist she’d love to collab with – and will we ever see her develop her own line?
How her emotional support eyelash curler (for real) has helped her through her struggles with PTSD and anxiety
Plus, Emily shares what it’s been like to watch her sister’s (Aimee Lou Wood) star rise – and does she ever do *her* makeup for the red carpet?

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Hosts: Carlene Higgins and Jill Dunn

Theme song, used with permission: Cherry Bomb by Saya 

Produced by Dear Media Studio

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The following podcast is a Dear Media production.
0:08.1	Welcome to Breaking Beauty, the podcast, all about the breakthrough people, products, and moments in beauty.
0:14.0	We're your host, Jill Dunn and Carleen Higgins.
0:26.9	Welcome back to Breaking Beauty, the podcast about the breakthrough people, products, and moments in beauty.
0:28.0	I'm Carleen Higgins.
0:31.1	I'm here with my bud in beauty, Jill Dunn.
0:32.1	Hey, Carlene.
0:36.1	And of course, we're two longtime beauty editors turned beauty podcasters.
0:37.7	You're probably sick of me saying that by now. But I'm going to say it every week anyway. And we get to talk to so many cool people on our show,
0:43.6	Carlene. And this guest today, I would say she's not only breaking through, breaking beauty,
0:49.1	she's kind of completely repainting it. And we were so excited to welcome Emily Wood, who we caught up with
0:55.4	the last time that we were in New York. And she's the London-born makeup artist and content
1:00.1	creator who's been turning heads with her high-impact expressive makeup looks. How would you
1:06.4	describe them, Carleen? Oh my gosh. I think she's like the 2.0 of clean beauty. Like everybody's asking
1:14.1	that question right now. What comes after clean beauty? And I feel like Emily has it because she's
1:20.1	really using color, like maximalist color, but it's on a minimalist face. Like her style is to not wear foundation, but to use a lot of color. So it
1:31.2	ends up looking really fresh. There's this juxtaposition that feels very editorial. And her way of
1:37.7	painting, so to speak, is she's just very free form. Like she'll often be walking as she's applying, you know, bright yellow eye shadow on her eyes.
1:48.8	Like, I don't know how she does it.
1:50.6	It just feels completely fresh, completely new.
1:53.7	And she feels like the breakthrough makeup artist of 2025 in my opinion.
1:57.9	Yeah. And you know that you're on to something and I'll give Emily credit where credit is due when I'm just seeing her style being ripped off by so many readers now. And using it in, I won't say specifically, but I just saw an influencer do a campaign with a K beauty brand. And she was applying this particular product out in the streets
	...

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