She’s the originator of some of the biggest makeup trends on the 'gram. Her pictures get hundreds of thousands of likes. And she's just been scooped up by leading youth entertainment network, KYRA, who use a groundbreaking algorithm to spot the world's most exciting emerging talent. Oh... and she's only 18.
To say Abby Roberts' rise to the top has been stratospheric is an understatement. And yet, the girl next door from Leeds is about as down to earth as they come. We spoke to her about how she got started, her career aspirations and the secret to her success.
I started posting online when I was 11. I was doing YouTube videos and messing around putting makeup on my sister. It was just for fun at the beginning, but through the years I’ve become much more serious and taught myself to a professional level.
It was two years ago when [top makeup influencer] James Charles found me on social media. I’d recreated the paint brush makeup trend started by him. He found me through that picture and responded by recreating the Instagram eye look that I'd started.
After that, he asked me to create a look on his Instagram story and my following just blew up. It doubled overnight from about 50k to 100k. It was insane. Now I have the ability to boost others on my platform like James did for me which is really important.
Getting to collaborate with people in the industry that I really admire, like Nikkie Tutorials which was surreal because I grew up watching Nikkie and learning how to do makeup from her, so getting the chance to do that was incredible.
My favourite singers are Lana Del Rey and Billie Eilish – they’re my idols, so getting the chance to work with either of them would be the absolute dream.
I don’t think there’s any secret or quick fix. It’s a lot of hard work and dedication. Consistency is probably the number one, most important thing. Post every day if you can. The more you post, the more chance you have of being discovered by people. Really practice your skills as well and be unique – do something different.
My favourite one is the Gucci snake look and the longest one was the porcelain face with blue fine china details. It took me about 12 hours. That was a long one!
I have a studio setup at home that I’ve created, so that’s where I shoot quite a bit. For Instagram I use my cameras to take pictures. Then for TikTok, I film everything on my phone in the app, I don’t use any other editing software.
I’ll take some pictures on my phone as I find them more relatable and I’ll mix them in with the professional ones I take on my camera for my Instagram grid. As for editing, I use Lightroom to alter the saturation and colours but I’m no stranger to a bit of FaceTune either.
It’s really random to be honest. I find inspiration all around. My main source of inspiration is pop culture, whatever’s trending, whatever’s happening in the world at the time. But it could be that I walk outside and see a flower that will then become the inspiration for a makeup look.
My followers always comment on things they’d like to see me do as well. I recently painted a pattern on my guitar and they were like “do it on your face!” So that look came from them.
When I’m doing a graphic liner, I like to use paint brushes rather than makeup brushes because I find them more precise (and they’re much cheaper).
I like to start on the outer corner and do one smooth swoop if I can. Lots of little strokes make it look bobbly. I’ll start with the wing, then I’ll go back over it from the point and join it to the rest of my eye. Then I just follow my lash line.
Ever since Euphoria was released I've seen lots of avant-garde pops of colour which has been my favourite recently.
I don’t really give up on makeup, I always try and do it until I get there. One look I absolutely hated doing, though, was the Teletubbies one. I looked crazy the entire time – my brows were blocked out and I painted my entire head red. It was one of those looks where you can’t really see the vision right until the end.
I thought about doing it but I feel like YouTube and TikTok does that for free and I wouldn’t want to charge my followers for something I could give them for free. I’m planning on doing more on my YouTube soon, so keep an eye out there.
Abby is moving to LA soon to star in her very own weekly YouTube show. The long-form series will include the out-of-the-box transformations she’s known for, as well as tutorials, and special guest appearances from beauty industry icons and friends. So watch this space.
