Golden 27: In the Chair With Kayla Jones
I’ve technically been sitting in Kayla’s makeup chair since high school.
If you’re from the South Shore, you might remember the MAC counter inside Macy’s at the Braintree Mall. That’s where I first knew Kayla as a makeup artist, long before KaylaMUABeauty, About Us, business spotlights or my Golden 27 photoshoot were even a thought.
I followed her on Instagram after that, so even though I hadn’t been sitting in her chair all these years, I’d still been watching her work. I saw the looks get more creative, the shoots become more elaborate and her work evolve beyond what I remembered from the MAC counter. So years later, when I knew I wanted to actually do something for my 27th birthday, choosing who I wanted to do my makeup was pretty easy.
I had recently moved back home and wanted the photos to feel like a little marker of where I was at: feminine, grown and very glam. I knew exactly what I wanted the makeup to give, showed Kayla the vision and let her do her thing.
While I was sitting there watching her work, we started talking about just how long she’s really been doing this.
Before the Makeup Chair
Kayla has been doing makeup since high school, more than a decade at this point. She recently found one of her original business cards while moving and, according to her, it was terrible lol. The colors, the design, all of it. But everybody has to start somewhere.
For Kayla, it actually started even earlier than that. She grew up with beauty around her. Both of her grandmothers worked in the beauty industry, and one would travel to clients’ homes. Kayla remembers taking the little lipstick samples she had, melting them down and mixing them together to create her own shades.
She was also obsessed with America’s Next Top Model, but not necessarily for the reasons you’d expect. It was the makeovers, photoshoots and production that caught her attention. Then came the OG YouTube makeup tutorial era, and by then, the interest was serious enough that her mom would catch her at three in the morning doing a full face of makeup just because.
For Kayla, sitting down and doing makeup was therapeutic. It gave her room to experiment, create and keep practicing, and eventually that creativity turned into actual work.
From MAC to Her Own Creative Space
Working at MAC gave Kayla something YouTube tutorials couldn’t: faces. Lots of them. When random customers walked up to the counter needing a foundation match, she had to learn how to look at a complexion and figure it out. Years later, you can see that experience in the way she works.
She doesn’t expect everybody to perfectly match a foundation straight out of the bottle. She mixes shades, adjusts for the season and pays attention to what the skin actually needs instead of automatically covering everything.
That philosophy carries through her entire process. Instead of starting with a full face of foundation and building layers of products with even more coverage on top, Kayla starts shaping the face first. Contour, blush and other complexion products already have coverage, so foundation and concealer can come later and only where they’re actually needed.
Even the brows have a reason for being done when they are. “If I did your brows first, I probably would’ve went in and carved them out,” she explained while doing mine. Once the rest of the makeup is there, she can see the “whole puzzle” and fill in what actually needs to be filled instead of making them harsher than necessary.
And yes, there is a point during the process where you may wonder where she’s going with all of this. She knows. Kayla told me she’s had plenty of clients look at themselves halfway through and basically think, What is going on? Then it comes together.
I know because I was watching her do my face the entire time and somehow still had a moment where I blinked and suddenly everything had melted together.
There’s More Than Soft Glam Here
Regular makeup clients are still what Kayla calls her “bread and butter,” and she has no plans to leave them behind, but her creativity goes beyond a traditional appointment.
Years of being around photography sets exposed her to the production side of creating an image, which makes sense when you hear how she talks about makeup. She’s thinking about the face, yes, but also the camera, lighting and final result.
That creative side is also part of what makes her studio chapter interesting. Today, Kayla works out of her creative studio, Studio 8 in Norwood, Massachusetts. She grew up right down the street from the space, and during our conversation she pointed out something I hadn’t really considered: there aren’t a ton of spaces in the area built with creatives, especially multimedia creatives, in mind.
Now she has a place where makeup, photography and other creative work can actually overlap. She works alongside other creatives, including her longtime friend Bernard, a photographer she’s known since high school.
And you don’t have to be working with Kayla to use the space. The Norwood studio is also available to rent, giving photographers, content creators and other creatives a place to bring their own shoots and ideas to life. It’s not just somewhere to take appointments; it’s somewhere to make things, and a space other people can make things in, too.
Artistry in the Influencer Era
More than a decade into doing makeup, Kayla is also figuring out what growth looks like without losing the part she actually loves.
And her work in beauty hasn’t only existed behind the chair. At one point, Kayla took that experience into product development and launched her own cruelty-free beauty line, Kayla MUA Beauty.
She’s already had opportunities to work with beauty brands and celebrities, but when we talked about where beauty is now, she made something clear: she doesn’t necessarily want to become an influencer. She likes being a makeup artist, and there’s a difference.
Kayla understands that social media, content and brand partnerships are part of the industry now, and she isn’t against them. She just doesn’t want every piece of her work to become sponsored or for the business of beauty to swallow the artistry that made her start in the first place. I think that's something every creator can understand.
After following Kayla’s work for years, I think that balance is part of what has kept me interested in what she creates. Her page has given me a front-row seat to the evolution: the makeup, the creative concepts, the shoots and now a studio of her own. There’s still room for the soft glam clients who have always been her bread and butter, but there’s also plenty of room for her to experiment and see where her creativity takes her next.
Golden 27 gave me a reason to finally sit in her chair again, but I already knew who I wanted doing my makeup. I’d been watching the work speak for itself for years.