Daniel Gray | Founder at Warpaint

Culturally, it’s unlikely that you’d be faulted by many to think that a men’s makeup brand makes little sense. Makeup, of course, is generally considered to be for women. That’s not to say that men don’t wear makeup. They do, for any number of reasons which we won’t get into here. That’s not the point of this story. The point is that we, as a culture, believe makeup is for women. We also won’t get too much into that can of worms.

In any case, if a man does wear makeup these days, he’s more often than not considered strange by the general public, or given some sort of label. 

And there’s one critical reason why that stigma exists: there has never been a true men’s makeup brand.

The reasoning seems simple: makeup isn’t masculine. But that’s a stereotype that Daniel Gray at Warpaint is trying to change.

Body Dysmorphia & Bullying

Our story begins nearly 20 years ago, when Daniel Gray was in middle school. That’s a tough time for most growing youngsters, but for Daniel it was worse.

“During middle school I got bullied because of my appearance,” Daniel told me, “and it literally changed my world from the day I started getting bullied. My ears were actually right angles to my head, so they stuck out quite a lot and I got bullied because of that. So straight away I was paranoid about the way I looked.”