Ethereal! Spicy! Sparkling! Mario Dedivanovic's Exclusive Guide to Upscale Holiday Glam

For beauty fanatics, there’s nothing quite as exciting as getting a backstage look at your favorite celebrity glam moments. Slip on your Artist Pass as we take you behind the scenes of the beauty looks that live rent-free in our minds from our favorite tastemakers and the talented artists they have on speed dial. Inside, their best-kept product secrets, niche tricks of the trade, and their hot takes on buzzy pop culture beauty moments.

Few makeup artists carry the same star power as their celebrity clientele, but there’s no denying that Mario Dedivanovic has ascended to that astral plane. The Albanian American makeup megastar has been practicing his craft since he was merely 17 years old, when he took his first “clients”—two singers he met while working at a Sephora brick-and-mortar in New York City—thus sparking an illustrious career marked by sold-out masterclasses, A-list clientele (ahem, Kim Kardashian, Ariana Grande, Jennifer Lopez… need we go on?), and adding more makeup moments to the beauty Hall of Fame than one can count.

While his roster of megastars continued to grow, Dedivanovic began garnering a devoted fan base of his own—including celebrities, fellow makeup artists, and regular beauty lovers alike who strove to achieve the Makeup by Mario look. Thus, in 2020, the namesake brand was born, and with it came one viral hit and high-demand product drop after another.

Images of the artist’s ethereal eye makeup and pillowy pouts still pepper our mood boards today, especially around the holidays, so the purveyor put me in the makeup chair (still pinching myself after that one-on-one) to create a bespoke holiday look that’s simple and glamorous, but easy to copy at home.

To Dedivanovic, nothing screams “holiday” like a set of smoldering, glowing-ember eyes. Using his recently launched Ethereal Eyes Eyeshadow Nature Palette, the artist buffs and blends a storm of twinkling gold shimmers and copper shadows onto my eyes to harken the holiday spirit.

The palette is furnished with 12 warm-toned shadows in an array of shimmer, satin, metallic, and matte finishes, and is the first from Makeup by Mario to combine earthy tones with dazzling, reflective finishes. Each shade is inspired by the radiant hues of sun-soaked fauna and light filtering through trees, offering a bounty of looks—from natural to glamorous—all in one.

In a cold season when the earth slumbers, it’s oh so haute to dress your eyes up with these elemental hues. Ahead, see a hearth-warmed holiday makeup look that evokes the glitter of falling snow, the heat of a flickering fire, and the sultriness of fur coats and bubbling champagne under a starry December sky.

Chic Cinnamon-Spice Holiday Eyes

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1. Define the Upper Waterline

Dedivanovic’s makeup regimen starts with gorgeously sculpted skin, but the eyes are a different story. The artist doesn’t reach for eye shadow first like us mere mortals, but instead picks up the Makeup by Mario Master Pigment Pro Pencil in The Perfect Brown. “I do a tightline with The Perfect Brown when I start,” he explains, sketching an inky espresso line onto the upper waterline (aka the “tightline” eyeliner technique). This step, though small in hindsight, helps “shape” the eye—thus beginning Dedivanovic’s signature face-studying process that enhances natural features. He also blends a few small smudges between the upper lashes, which makes your fringe appear thicker without a lick of mascara.

“It’s giving the eye a beautiful definition,” he explains as he works the pencil onto the waterline and between lash clusters. “When you do a good tightline on the inner rim, at times you don’t need to put liner onto the actual lid,” the artist adds. Dedivanovic explains that tightlining the rim and adding a swipe onto the lash line can “close the lids” if you're too heavy-handed.

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How do you achieve a chic, minimal holiday eye that still feels festive?

“[By] sculpting the eye, which is what I’m doing now with the liner, [and am] going to start doing now with a bit of shadow. That beautiful, softly sculpted eye as your base will keep it more elevated because you’re honoring your eye shape and the architecture of your face (and sprinkling the fun stuff over it after). I think that’s a good way to keep it elevated.” — Dedivanovic

2. Sculpt With Neutral Shadow

Dedivanovic’s style is rooted in sculpture, so naturally, his first step with the new Ethereal Eyes palette is to “sculpt” the eyes. Dipping a medium-fluffy eye shadow brush into Shade 9, a tawny birch, the artist begins blending the pigment onto the outer corner and crease of my eye—creating the foundation for the rest of the look. He always dots his pigment-packed brushes onto the back of his hand before stippling them onto the skin, as lots of thin layers are essential when replicating Dedivanovic’s signature airbrushed style.

“No matter what feature I’m working on, it’s always best for me to do it in thin layers and take a step back,” he muses. “That’s how you get the most natural effect.”

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3. Carve the Corners

If you lean toward “clean girl” makeup, you can always set down the eye shadow brush here. That said, Dedivanovic’s holiday look takes things up a notch. The Ethereal Eyes: Nature palette houses a few illustrious metallics, offering many festive iterations of this look, but the artist chooses shade 11, a disco copper, to complement my hazel orbs.

Using the brand’s E5 Precision Eye Shadow Brush, Dedivanovic starts by concentrating the copper shadow on my outer corners before slowly blending the shade into the center of the lid. Remember, the key is to work in layers, so don’t be afraid to spend some time on this step. It’s easier to add than to take away, he explains.

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What are some time-saving makeup techniques you’ve picked up over the years?

“I think sometimes one shade, or a cream shadow, smudged all over the lid will look just as impactful as a more intricate eye look.” — Dedivanovic

5. Deepen Lower Lash Line With Copper Shadow

No Makeup by Mario look would be complete without extra eye-enhancing touches. The artist uses the smaller end of the E6 Dual-Ended Eye Shadow Brush to paint the same copper shadow across my lower lash line. Dedivanovic is careful to place the shadow on top of the bronze eyeliner for extra grip and longevity—essential for late nights at ritzy festivities.

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6. Add “Grown-Up” Glitter

There’s no time like the holidays to add a touch of sparkle to your look, but many beauty lovers shy away from glitter for fear of looking juvenile. That said, Dedivanovic proves that “grown-up” glitter is possible (and encouraged!)—it’s just about using the right kind.

According to the artist, the best glittery eyes look soft and glossy, which is why sheer shimmers are his powders of choice—especially when draped prettily over your eye shadow like a top coat, not the main event.

“Make sure there’s not a lot of pigment in the glitter,” he explains, referencing the “glossy shimmer” formulas within the Nature palette. These glistening shades offer sheer pigment in a handful of earthy tones that dial it back on color to spotlight sparkle. “What’s great about these is that they’re so lightly pigmented that you put them over anything without altering the shade [underneath] too much,” he muses. “I think that keeps it more grown-up, more elevated, and more ethereal.”

What’s your favorite celebrity eye look you’ve done?

“On the subject of sparkles, a couple of them come to mind. I had a little Ariana Grande era… and for some reason, I got into sparkle during that era. We did a couple of things, like the ‘No Tears Left to Cry’ video—there was a stunning multidimensional, sparkly look that we were doing, and it was just magical on camera.

“Another one I think of is the ‘wet look’ [from the 2019 Met Gala] with Kim [Kardashian], of course. That one just kind of went wild on the internet.” — Dedivanovic

7. Plump the Lash Line With Plum Liner

“Plum eyeliner is having a comeback,” Dedivanovic muses while warming up the Master Pigment Pro Pencil in Plum. To deepen the eyes, the artist diffuses a smoky stream of plum eyeliner into the copper tones of the eye shadow for a seamless transition.

Pro Tip: Before completing a smoky eye shadow look, pick up a very light layer of your crease shade onto a fluffy brush and blend the edges for a more flawless finish. “I like to wait until the end before I add certain things because I never want to overdo it,” Dedivanovic explains during this step.

During this final step, you can make your final “edits,” as the artist calls them—meaning you can remove some elements, if you need. But because he is working in “such thin layers,” Dedivanovic usually uses this opportunity to add more shading or further blend.

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8. Pack on the Mascara

If you’ve ever watched a clip of Dedivanovic’s Master Classes, you’ll know that the multi-hyphenate presses each brush, tool, and wand onto his palm first before applying the product to the skin. This is to achieve an ultra-fine layer of product, which assists the artist’s thin application technique—but the same rules apply for mascara, too.

“I used to always use a paper towel to wipe the wand off,” he explains, lamenting that most mascaras have lumps of product clumped at the wand’s tip. It’s because of this that he developed the Makeup by Mario Master Mascara with a cone-shaped, tapered wand and a stopper that erases this issue. After curling my lashes, Dedivanovic applies a few thin layers of the inky formula to further intensify the eyes.

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9. Add Sugarplum Blush

What’s a holiday makeup look without a pop of blush? Using the Soft Pop Plumping Blush Veil in the cool, blue-pink shade Pink Peony, the makeup artist stipples featherlight layers onto the apples of my cheeks. By delicately sweeping upward, Dedivanovic paints a sugarplum pink flush up to the highest points of her cheekbones.

To add warmth (and a tad more dimension), Dedivanovic sparingly adds the shade Rose Crush, a honey-pink hue, atop the fairy-pink shade. It’s not blush blindness if you use sheer layers! (Tip: Apply cream blush after powder to inject radiance back into the skin.)

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10. Lift Your Lips

No Makeup by Mario look is complete without perhaps the artist’s most popular makeup technique—the “lip lift,” which offers the illusion of a fuller pout with strategic lip liner placement. Using the natural contours and shadows of your lip shape as a guide, Dedivanovic’s technique is to overline the Cupid’s bow and below the center (fullest point!) of your bottom lip before tracing your natural lip line to the corners of the mouth.

He performs this technique on me in the shade Smokey Pink, a cool-toned rose hue (and one of the artist’s “all-time favorites”) of the Ultra Suede Sculpting Lip Pencil. Dedivanovic prefers the combination of sparkly holiday eye shadow with a “cool girl, slightly lived-in lip” to let the eyes do the talking.

The artist completes the look by dabbing the Super Satin Lipstick in the nude-pink shade Bronx Baby with the tip of his finger, simultaneously blending any harsh edges to make the color and shape appear more natural. “You’ll have more of that just-bitten look,” he says as he works. “French-girl vibe,” I reply. “Yeah, French-girl vibe,” he echoes.

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The Final Look

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