From serving in an Orlando bakery to doing Kim Kardashian’s make-up: plus-size Filipino-American influencer and beauty entrepreneur Patrick Starrr

‘I was so crazy with smacking powder on my face … it was ludicrous,’ says Patrick Starrr of the YouTube videos that launched his career as a beauty influencer

Seven years on and now with millions of followers, he has done make-up for Katy Perry and Kim Kardashian, and launched his own product line, One/Size

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Patrick Starrr, YouTube beauty influencer, make-up artist to the stars and founder of the One/Size make-up line. A Filipino American, he grew up in Orlando, Florida, in an era of makeover shows and harboured a love for Disney princesses, who he says were “all about transformation”.

Kavita Daswani

Published: 1:15am, 7 Oct 2020Updated: 9:38pm, 1 Jan 2021

Patrick Starrr had just returned from New York, where he saw himself on a hoarding above Sephora.

“There really is a plus-size Filipino man in front of a mega campaign in Times Square,” says Starrr. “I had to ask myself, ‘why?’”

The answer is simple enough. Starrr – born Patrick Sidney Simondac – is among the most established of beauty influencers, a prominent beauty entrepreneur with millions of followers and a thriving business. He is a make-up artist to the stars, collaborator with MAC Cosmetics, the founder of his own brand, One/Size. Everything he does, he says, is in service to ideals of community, diversity and inclusion.

Starrr, 30, is chatting via a Zoom call from his Los Angeles home, wearing a long bronze wig, elaborate faux lashes, caked-on and contoured foundation and full, plump lips. His outsize personality is in full force.

One/Size Visionary Palette from Patrick Starrr.

Starrr is a native of Orlando, Florida. His Filipino immigrant parents wanted their son to “get a diploma, get a degree, these are the things that are deemed successful in our society”, he recalls. For a while, he followed their wishes. At 18, he was a nursing student, and worked part-time jobs teaching piano, serving customers in a bakery, doing photography.