Celebrity makeup artist Hung Vanngo paints some of the most beautiful faces in the world. (Stars such as Jennifer Lopez, Bella Hadid, Maye Musk and Selena Gomez are very familiar with his chair.) And because supermodels spend their fair share of lives getting glammed, it’s easy to become jaded to the process—but there’s one client in particular Vanngo says takes a special interest in the work it takes to perfect skin: supermodel Emily Ratajkowski.
“Emily is someone who can sit for hours in my chair while I’m prepping the skin,” says Vanngo on a Zoom call to celebrate the supermodel’s latest gig: creative director and partner of skin-care brand LOOPS. “When I heard the news about her joining [LOOPS], I wasn’t surprised at all,” says Vanngo, adding that the partnership makes perfect sense. “I do love the mask process,” adds Ratajkowski on the call. “Hung cares so much about skin care, and that’s half of makeup for me.”
LOOPS is a solutions-oriented face-mask brand, currently offering five hydrogel masks created for different occasions, based on what your skin is needing.
Ratajkowski says she was introduced to the brand at the start of quarantine. While keeping busy with board games and movies, Ratajkowski’s “pod” also did a lot of masking, specifically with LOOPS. “I was like, ‘Wait, I want to take these home,’ I loved them so much. So it was a natural evolution when they reached out,” she says. “I had already posted a selfie of myself wearing the face mask in March on Stories, so it was a really natural evolution to our relationship.”
On building a brand…
“I’m really excited because this is what I love to do,” says Ratajkowski. “I really enjoy creative control, and control in general to be totally honest [laughs]. I love working and building brands and partnering with people.”
Along with her passion for branding, Ratajkowski says she’e excited to tap into her creative background for her new role. “I have a background in art and love creating visuals, which I obviously do with my own brand, Inamorata. But I had never done anything in the beauty-skin-care space, which is funny because I really love makeup and skin care, as Hung can attest.”
On her love for beauty and skin care…
“I’m one of those people who have tried every product—but I’ll also say that I’m not a fussy person. I will let Hung take as long as he wants for a face mask, but for myself I’d probably give 15 minutes from my morning routine,” says Ratajkowski. “And what I love about LOOPS is that it’s a mask that I can throw on for 15 minutes while I’m answering calls from bed. Or even like this morning—I had kind of a hectic morning and I was making my bed and running around having my coffee and taking calls, and I kept the face mask on while I was doing all of that, then I took it off and did my makeup.”
On building a skin-care routine…
“For me, [LOOPS’] attitude of approachable but effective beauty and technology is so nice,” says Ratajkowski, who notes that her early twenties didn’t didn’t have much of a solid skin-care routine. “I was using bar soap to cleanse, I didn’t moisturize,” she says. “I didn’t have a sense of really great skin care, and then I sort of went the other way in the past two years.”
“I’ve tried every retinol, every vitamin C, really experimented with a lot of different things, and kind of came back to a middle ground of simplifying my approach and just having 10 products, including makeup, that I rely on. And I think that face masks have always felt separate to me from that, and now I get to integrate that into my core [10] things. And I want that for people in general, for my followers. This is something that feels like they’re treating themselves without having to dedicate their whole morning to it.”
On her best beauty tip…
“I used to think washing your face was really, really important—and I do still—but I think you should only wash it once a day at night, and really lightly. Because otherwise, at least for my skin, it strips my skin of the natural oils and makes my skin breakout because it dries. So I do wash my face at night, but I think simplifying it is better [for your skin]. Oh, and use cold water—not hot! That’s my new trick.”
