EXCLUSIVE: Hung Vanngo Unveils Namesake Brand at Sephora

Megawatt makeup artist Hung Vanngo can now add “founder” to his résumé.

Vanngo is launching Hung Vanngo Beauty, an artistry-driven assortment of makeup comprised of an eye shadow palette, two eyeliners, a lipstick, a lip liner, a bronzer and a blush. Prices range from $22 to $49, and they launch both in-store and online at sephora.com Sept. 8.

Vanngo, who moved from Vietnam to a refugee camp in Thailand and settled in Calgary, Canada, as a child, said his early affinity for art ultimately led to his now decades-long career as a makeup artist. Though he initially set out to become a hairstylist, he was always attracted to painting and drawing, and he’s taken a painterly approach with the product assortment.

“In the past 20 years, my aesthetic has always been similar. I’ve loved more glamorous women, and a lot of women are afraid of colors — they see a blue or red in a neutral palette and panic. Color placement in a palette can make people feel so intimidated, and we wanted to come out with a line that doesn’t make people feel intimidated,” he said. “We say this brand is perfecting the basics.”

Enter the Color Story Eyeshadow Palettes, which come in eight shades with names such as Outstanding Orange and Rebellious Red & Pink. “If you look back at my career, I’ve never been afraid of color,” he said.

Vanngo started working on the brand during the pandemic, and launched his YouTube channel in tandem with the development process. He’s amassed roughly 600,000 subscribers on the channel, and elsewhere, he has 4 million followers on Instagram.

“All my video is long-form. I teach people how to do makeup from beginning to end. There’s no skipping,” he said. “That’s going to be a platform that I want to educate people about makeup even more.”

He’s also consulted for makeup brands before, and said a lot of those lessons were translated into his namesake brand. “I have to think not just as a makeup artist, but as a consumer as well,” he said. “Whatever I create or achieve, I have to think of the people who actually aren’t makeup artists and how they’re going to use it. That’s the challenge.”

He’s given some thought to how he’d like to expand the range already. “We are going to have a full line in the future,” he said. “I wanted to start with color because I want consumers to learn them. There’s something missing in the market right now, and for me, it’s colors.”

He joins a long list of makeup artists who have taken stabs at entrepreneurship, from legacy players like Laura Mercier and Bobbi Brown to more recent entrants like Mary Phillips or Mario Dedivanovic. The choice to use his name for the brand was a personal one. “When I was growing up, my name is Hung — imagine how I got treated in high school,” he said. “But I learned to love my name, and that’s the legacy I want to create for myself.”