The Mother of Draguns, make-up legend, entrepreneur and YouTube star Nikita Dragun has launched the latest piece of her make-up empire: The Dragun Beauty Face Palette. With her first ever Dragun Beauty Pop-Up at the Beverly Center in West Hollywood this Saturday (open to the public!!) Nikita Dragun launches the second piece of her soon-to-be beauty empire after her Dragun Beauty DragunEGG TRANSformation kit launched last year-and sold out in 24 hours (no big deal!)!!!
LAFM sat down with Nikita Dragun ahead of her epic launch in LA to learn all things beauty, all things Nikita, and all about this one-palette for all kit! Check out this exclusive interview below!
LAFM: You’re a YouTube Star, and a certified Makeup Queen, while also being an inspiring activist in the Transgender community, can you tell us your story, and essentially how this latest addition to your beauty line came to be?
Nikita Dragun: I’ve always created this Nikita Dragun persona from a young age, from when I was a young boy I always had this dual life-things would happen in my real life where I was bullied or something, and in my mind it felt like it was happening in a different reality. I would always think to myself in those difficult times-what would happen if I was my true self? If I was Nikita all the time? And now I’ve gotten to the point where I get to embody that. I really take a lot of pride in everything I’ve been able to create, it’s really me-I’m so immersed in every detail and aspect of creating my products and how I want the launch to go. I like to be apart of every detail-from the font that goes into the Dragun Dollars to the messaging in the emails, I like being apart of every aspect of my business-I’m such a crazy perfectionist!!
LAFM: You’re doing things other people aren’t-in the beauty industry and in getting people to recognize who you are-so walk me through this insane video you created for your launch!
Nikita Dragun: I have this whole circus going through my head like 95% of the time, I feel like I’m in a different reality sometimes!! always thought I was too extra, too obnoxious but now I’ve just really honed in on it-I always thought I was too much but now I realize that this is my gift. The first campaign was about fairytale, this fantasy setting it up with the DragunEGG, but it was also about starting this whole revolution and showing myself as a Transgender entrepreneur, and the CEO of my own company!
For the Face Palette-I’m so obsessed with the show POSE and the ballroom scene, I feel like a lot of the traditions were started from this time from these gorgeous women of color, of transpeople and I was really inspired by that whole ballroom culture of the 1980s! I obviously wanted to do a face palette because it’s all about transformation, I wanted to pay homage but I also wanted to elevate it and do something different-so I went with DRAGon Ball (I’m obsessed with anime and everything is a big play on DragonBall Z!) and it’s like a futuristic Drag Ballroom craziness! What’s awesome is that everyone involved in the video are real dancers and involved in the LGBTQ+ community, and I really wanted to highlight that!
LAFM: Amazing, now tell us about The Dragun Beauty Face Palette! We have to know all about it!
Nikita Dragun: Creating the face palette-it is obviously about makeup, but at the same time it’s so much more than that to me. I never wanted to do anything basic, I spent 18 years of my life being a boy, so I don’t want to waste one more second not being the most me! Like I said earlier the inspo is an homage to the lifestyle and scene shown in POSE, and all about TRANSformation. I want to always be transparent with people, so I put my comatose face getting all that plastic surgery on the front of the palette and inside are different colors that can be used for contouring, blush, eyeshadow-each color can work for any skin tone and for any part of your face!
This is a contour-blush-highlight palette, but I call it face because I literally use it EVERYWHERE. I kept it super simplistic because when I’m doing my own makeup, I want a big mirror, cool packaging, amazing formulas and shades that just F$#%ing! work! We’ve got 2 contour shades that are very mimicking the shadow of the bone, a lot of times when people want to contour it’s hard to find a really nice shade that’s not too gray but not too warm, and I spent a year developing these shades so they go on easy and come off easy it’s not gross shit you’re putting on your face!
For me Femme is about feminizing-with these shades you’re really able to carve and create whatever you want. I’ll be honest-I do not look the same AT ALL without makeup, I’ve created this whole career and this whole Nikita Dragun persona through the use of TRANSforming myself, and that’s really what this Face Palette is all about. I’ve tried and tested all of my products to make them universal for everyone, and I can honestly say all the reviewers who’ve bought it and tried it-it’s never been a thing that ‘oh this didn’t work for me’ -it works on every skin tone! It’s also vegan and cruelty-free and they literally melt into the skin. Also, every shade in the palette is from my identity-from the shade Surge which stands for surgery to the shimmer shade ‘Silicone’ which stands for all the silicone I’ve put in my body-I wanted to make sure this palette really represented me and all those out there who want to TRANSform!
Nikita Dragun is literally our HERO and #BossBabe and we’re so excited to support her first ever Pop-Up Launch at the Beverly Center in West Hollywood this Saturday! We’re all about transforming our makeup routine-and ourselves, so stop by to grab her latest palette and shop online here to get the whole beauty set! #getshopping #LAFMApproved
