WORDS Maja Bebber
PHOTOGRAPHER, CREATIVE DIRECTION & PRODUCTION: Raphaële Sohier
STYLING: Jasmine Wener
MUA: Adam Oaknine
HAIR: Ashley Costa
NAIL ARTIST: Rose Falby
MODEL: Mei Pang
RETOUCHER: Sloane Bartley
BTS VIDEOGRAPHER: Nicole Davis
PHOTOGRAPHY ASSISTANTS: Kathriel Rivera & Sloane Bartley
DESIGNERS: Tristan Réhel, Ella Pattinson & Maxence Richard
Mei Pang, better known by her online moniker Meicrosoft, has mastered the art of creating stunning makeup that looks like no other. The Toronto-based makeup artist found a home in brushes, colours and her creativity. Whether it’s lips, butterflies, flowers, waves or snowflakes – she knows how to do it all, and she does it well. Recently, she has recreated Pat McGrath’s iconic Maison Margiela porcelain doll makeup look. To date, Mei counts over 3 million followers on Instagram and about 3.7 million followers on TikTok.
With BRICKS, she sits down to talk about the art of makeup, how creating makeup looks helped her on her journey to sobriety and so much more.
Mei has been a makeup enthusiast since she was in her teens. She discovered her love for makeup on platforms such as MySpace and Tumblr: “That’s when I started seeing different people, different ethnicities and multiple different styles and makeup was a core part of that. So I would say my love started at a very early age. However, I’ve been doing it professionally since the pandemic but I’ve always been posting my stuff for fun maybe but was to seven to eight years.”
Tumblr has been one of the catalysts for her inspirations and creations. She says, “[It] was a great hub for multiple different aesthetics. If you bring up a certain aesthetic that happened in the early 2000s – either the Scene Girl or Lana Del Rey or the American Apparel – I probably have tried to do that. And maybe failed, maybe succeeded, but it was such a good time to experiment.”
With such a high social media presence comes a lot of pressure. For Mei, it is important to maintain a certain kind of balance: “I would say my relationship with social media ebbs and flows and I’m always trying to find a balance. My kind of work, my industry, involves putting out your entire life – when it comes to everything that goes on during your day, who you are as a person, your personality, every single facet of that.”
She continues, “I like to keep a lot of things to myself because I don’t want my entire identity out there in the world for people to perceive and critique. So my relationship with social media is at arm’s length in a way. I need to be fully aware of my presence and how much I can give. I’m very hyper-aware of how even the smallest thing I do come across and I don’t want it to be seen as malicious and I don’t want for people to think something differently about me.”
There are countless well-documented downsides to social media, but equally, there are good sides – if used wisely. Mei has created a loving and supportive community and initially, that is what creating is about – to build a community that values your creation and supports you every step of the way. “I feel very lucky to have people that follow me and view my art because they do understand my perspective,” she explains. “When it comes to the crazier makeup looks that I do, I originally thought when I signed up on TikTok that I would get clowned by 12-year-olds but they take me in stride and they encourage me but the most important thing that they do, which I appreciate is, that they also critique me constructively where they help me push myself and my art and they say: ‘Have you tried using this material?’ and giving recommendations and I think it’s quite wonderful to have people like that where we have a mutual level of respect where it’s not a hive mind.”
Mei has a specific routine that she follows to unlock her creativity: “I like to maintain a routine so my routine is the same every single day. I wake up at around 4 or 4.30 in the morning. I have started collecting a lot of art books, and references to either digital, graphic design and typography, calligraphy, nature books, vintage pottery, and porcelain. I collect a lot of styles of reference books. I take a look at all of them. Seeing it, a colour palette sticks out to me to see if there’s a certain iconography that I want to do at that moment. From there, it’s around 5am, I do my usual coffee sit down and then I do possible makeup looks that are a little bit more elaborate and would usually take me one to two hours and it takes me around three or four. That will take me to around 9am. I post around 10 or 10:30am, and then real life starts.”
When I started to experiment with makeup, I leaned into my art university background when it came to my techniques… I left university thinking ‘I’m never touching a paintbrush ever again’.
Mei tells me all about her journey and where it all started. “I would say I’ve always been keen on makeup. However, when I started to experiment with makeup, I leaned into my art university background when it came to my techniques,” she explains. “I went to school for drawing and painting with a minor in screen printing. I left university thinking ‘I’m never touching a paintbrush ever again’ because the whole experience tripped me up and stopped me out.”
She continues, “Having makeup in a completely different medium to work with has been full circle in a way for me because I can still do my art but I don’t have that dreading feeling to it. In terms of my bolder makeup looks,I’m staring at my makeup collection right now. Surprisingly, I don’t have a lot of makeup in comparison to other beauty people who are in the social media space. My collection is quite modest. I’ve tried to keep it to things that I use and it’s a lot of color – I pride myself on having every shade of eyeshadow under the sun. When it comes to more elaborate looks, I tend to lean into more theatrical andspecial effects makeup to get me that have the desired effect.”
Makeup is what motivates Mei – I can tell by the way she talks to me about it. “It just clicks, it just makes sense to me. This is what I’m passionate about. This is what makes me the happiest and I’m very lucky to have this be my career. In a world of creating, the comparison is easy to come by.”
Mei doesn’t compare herself to anyone, she tells me. “In a world of creating, comparison is easy to come by.Comparison is the thief of joy. I do feel like I’m a confident person, in my style of makeup. This is going to sound incredibly egotistical, but I feel like I’ve stayed in my lane. It’s like when I was growing up, being one of the very few people of colour in my town where I’m first generation Canadian. My parents grew up in Malaysia, so I was too Asian for the white kids and too white for the Asian kids [so you] kind of have to just carve their path and keep their head down. And I take that approach to makeup as well where like, you know, I’m just gonna just keep it pushing, do what I do and you know, no one can tell me otherwise.”
I challenge what the structure of femininity is [by] being covered in tattoos and having no hair. I want to be known as that girl who does the experimental. I want people to know that there’s more than one way of just being comfortable.
Besides makeup, Mei dreams of more: “I would love to see the inner workings of a fashion show on a runway. I would love to help conceptualize different ideas and to just like be a part of that environment. Yeah, whether it comes to editorial shoots or Fashion Week, it would be so cool.”
A firm believer in the power of manifestation, Mei shares what she would like to manifest for herself: “I would love to remain sober as I have been for the past four years. I would love to be in more tangible pieces of media, those are some off-the-top-of-my-head things that I would love to do. I am just going crazy with my makeup.”
Everyone wants to be remembered for something. “I’ve thought about it a couple of times. Someone said to me that you die twice – the first time is when you physically die and the second time is when the last person says the last word about you. I’ve been thinking about a lot about where I do want to leave a mark on the world. I challenge what the structure of femininity is like [by] being covered in tattoos and having no hair. I want to be known as that girl who does the experimental. I want people to know that there’s more than one way of just being comfortable. When people don’t know me and they see me on the screen for the first time, they think that I’m an attention seeker or see the way that I look and the things that I do as a cry for help. However, genuinely I feel so normal. I feel like the person on the street, I feel like everybody in the subway – this is my normal and I want people to think about that, and to ruminate on that”
Sobriety is a big theme for the makeup artist. She proudly tells me that she has been sober for years and that sobriety has essentially given her her career. “I say all the time that sobriety has given me my career – I wouldn’t be able to do the things that I’m doing right now if I was still on the path that I was four years ago. I was a bit of a feral person back in the day when I had no structure. I didn’t want to do much except go out, party, drink, make bad decisions… all that stuff. When I finally got sober, I realized my love for makeup and now I have the time to do it and I can do it with a clear head and a clear conscience. Back in the day, putting on my makeup was a chore that I had to do every morning, but now I can fully embrace it and have fun with it. Sobriety has given me that.”
She also shares the best advice that she has received so far: “I think all these quotes come from my father – shout-out to my dad – the two things that I say all the time that people are probably sick of me saying is to try everything once and if it sticks, it sticks, and if it doesn’t, at least you tried. Number two, he tells me you can do whatever you say. He says, ‘at the end of the day, all you have is yourself, so you might as well do right by you’. That has stuck with me.”
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