Social media has no shortage of talented makeup artists and content creators. Some have enormous audiences, some work with the biggest luxury brands in the world, some have a decade or more behind them.
Every so often, though, one of them makes me stop - not because of the follower count, but because of the way she thinks.
Elena Rachitskaya is one of those.
She isn’t one of the biggest names in beauty content yet. She’s one of the most precise. If she keeps working the way she works, I think she has everything it takes to become one of the most influential people in beauty content over the next few years.
Which is why she’s getting a whole article.
Who is Elena Rachitskaya?
Elena Rachitskaya is a professional makeup artist and international content creator, born in Russia. She studied marketing first, then figured out mid-degree that makeup and beauty were the actual passion. She went to work as a professional makeup artist, then onto fashion productions and fashion weeks in Paris and Milan, and worked with international brands including Dior, Clarins, and Shiseido. She later moved to Belgrade, where she kept building her career as an international content creator, as she shared in an interview with WANNABE MAGAZINE.
Her success didn’t start with the makeup skills, though. It started with the thinking.
She studied marketing - and it shows in every video
Plenty of makeup artists can build a beautiful look. Very few can build a brand.
Watch Elena for ten minutes and it’s obvious she thinks like a marketer as well as an artist. Every video has a job to do.
She isn’t filming to post content. She’s filming to solve a problem. Small distinction, and it changes everything.
She’s teaching, not selling
Her order of priorities is what I admire most.
Most creators lead with the product - which foundation to buy, which concealer is best. Elena leads with the question:
- How do you do makeup on a hooded eyelid?
- How do you choose an undertone?
- Why does the same makeup look great on one person and fall flat on another?
The products only arrive once the viewer understands the principle. That’s also why her content still works months, even years, after it goes up.
She demonstrates this technique beautifully in a short video - watch it on Instagram.
The video that went viral
The video most people associate with her is the one on eye makeup for hooded eyes. She told WANNABE MAGAZINE the idea came from one of her students, who asked how to work with that eye shape. Rather than answer one person, she turned the explanation into a video. It pulled more than 24 million views and took her far past her local audience.
That’s marketing thinking in a sentence. Stop hunting for clever ideas and listen to the questions your audience is already asking.
One of the techniques most identified with her is her approach to eyeliner for hooded eyes. The short demonstration below shows how subtle placement can completely change the look of the eye - watch it on Instagram.
Her content strategy is a marketing masterclass
If every business owner learned one thing from her, I’d want it to be how she builds content.
People assume she’s posting a lot. She’s recycling smartly. The same idea keeps coming back in a different format. Instead of inventing ten ideas, she takes one and repackages it for the platform. That’s a far more efficient way to work.
She thinks in 360 degrees
Here’s the thing almost no creator actually does. She doesn’t work platform by platform - she works message first, and then decides how each platform should receive it:
- A short, fast video for TikTok.
- An informative Reel for Instagram.
- A longer, more in-depth video for YouTube.
- High-quality photos for Pinterest.
- Content that keeps reinforcing the brand across additional channels.
Every platform gets the version that fits how people consume content there. That’s not copy-paste, that’s adaptation - and it’s the whole difference between having a social presence and having a content strategy.
Every platform has its own language
The most common mistake I see business owners make is filming one video and dumping it everywhere. Elena does the opposite, because she knows the networks don’t behave the same way:
- On YouTube, people are looking to learn.
- On Instagram, they’re looking for inspiration.
- On TikTok, they want value quickly.
- On Pinterest, they’re looking for ideas that will still be relevant a year from now.
So the editing, the pacing, the length, and the structure change to match.
An aesthetic that goes past “pretty”
At a glance it just looks beautiful. Look harder and there’s a real visual language: the lighting is almost always soft, the color palette is consistent, the editing is clean, and the background never pulls focus.
Even the simplest thing she films looks like a magazine shoot. That isn’t an accident. It’s the brand.
She doesn’t chase trends
She’s also in no rush to jump on every new trend. She acknowledges what’s happening in beauty, but most of her content rests on principles that will still be true a year from now:
- How to choose a shade.
- How to understand face shape.
- How to create a natural look.
- How to use products correctly.
None of that goes out of style.
She’s not the biggest name yet, and that’s the advantage
To be fair: there are bigger makeup artists and creators out there, with millions more followers, far more years in the industry, and full production teams behind them. Elena is still relatively early in this.
That’s exactly what makes her worth watching:
- You get to watch a brand being built in real time.
- You get to see the strategy.
- You get to see the consistency.
- You get to see the thinking.
And you get to learn from her before she’s a name everyone already knows.
If she keeps working this way, she’ll go very far. Not on luck, not on the algorithm - on the fact that she builds every piece of the brand on purpose.
What makeup artists and hairstylists can learn from her
Don’t copy her style. Do steal her approach.
- Teach before you sell - value builds trust.
- Listen to your clients’ questions - that’s where the best ideas come from.
- Build a consistent visual language - people should recognize you even without seeing your account name.
- Think of content as a system - one idea can become ten different pieces of content.
- Adapt content to the platform - not every video suits every network.
- Invest in the small details - lighting, editing, composition, and storytelling work together.
- Build a content library, not just a feed - good content should still be useful a year from now.
She demonstrates this beautifully in the short tutorial below - watch it on Instagram.
Why I recommend following her
I follow plenty of beauty creators. Elena caught my attention for one reason: she makes me think. Not only about makeup, but about how you build a brand, how you teach, and how you make content people actually want to watch.
If you’re a makeup artist, a hairstylist, a content creator, or a beauty business owner, her account is a genuinely good place to get ideas. Not because she does everything perfectly, but because she shows what happens when professionalism, aesthetics, marketing sense, and consistency all point the same direction over time. It’s not a guarantee of success. It’s an approach worth learning from.
