Celebrity makeup artist Kristofer Buckle has spent decades getting huge stars like Mariah Carey, Christina Aguilera and Lindsay Lohan red carpet–ready. He’s the one they trust when every detail matters. But when his own reflection started to feel off, the man behind some of the best faces in beauty decided it was time to make a change. “I wasn’t feeling handsome,” he says. “And I work in beauty. You can’t sell confidence if you don’t have it.”
When the Makeup Tricks Stop Working
In his early 50s, Buckle started to notice a shift. His eyes, once his signature feature, grew heavier and more asymmetrical. His chin lacked definition. The face he had known and worked with for decades felt unfamiliar. To compensate, he relied on the tools he knew best. “I was using Japanese eye tape every day. I was painting on a beard just to give my jaw some structure. It was too many tricks,” he says. “I was correcting everything. It became exhausting. I just didn’t feel like myself anymore.”
From One Fix to a Full Plan
What started as a plan to lift his eyes quickly evolved after a consultation with New York facial plastic surgeon David Rosenberg, MD. Buckle had only planned to address his heavy eyelids, but Dr. Rosenberg recommended a combination of surgeries to address a few concerns in areas he needed it, including lifting his lower face and strengthening his profile. The final plan included five procedures in one surgery: upper blepharoplasty, browlift, deep plane facelift, deep plane necklift and a chin implant. “If you fix one thing, it can throw the rest of your face out of balance,” Buckle says. “This brought everything back into alignment.”
The chin implant, in particular, changed everything he says. “I used to joke that I looked like a Muppet reject,” he says. “Now I have structure. My face looks masculine again.”
A Familiar Face
Recovery, to his surprise, was the easy part. Buckle iced religiously, skipped pain medication and was back on his feet within days. But it was the emotional shift that left the biggest impression. Compliments came quickly, but it was his mother’s reaction that stayed with him. “She said, ‘You look just like that photo from Acapulco in 1999.’ That’s exactly what I wanted,” he says. “I didn’t want to look different. I wanted to look like me again.”
These days, he says he wears less makeup and doesn’t need face tape or layers of contour to feel composed. “I don’t need to create illusions anymore. I can just be clean.”
Why He’s Not Keeping It a Secret
Buckle has shared his journey openly on instagram, posting before-and-after photos and documenting his recovery. “When people hide something, it’s usually because there’s shame,” he says. “I don’t have shame. I have clarity. This worked.”
He’s also practical about what the surgery means. “People think plastic surgery is about vanity. For me, it was about maintenance. You fix chipped paint. You change the windshield wipers. This is your vehicle. Keep it running.”
