Recently, celebrity makeup artist and beauty brand founder Patrick Ta has come under fire for allegedly copying the transition blush effect popularized by London-based makeup artist Ngozi Edeme, AKA PaintedbyEsther.
In May, Ta released his “Transition Blush System,” a three-pronged beauty framework designed to blend blush into concealer for an ombré-like effect. If this tonal melt sounds familiar, well, that’s because it is.
Celebrity makeup artist and blush aficionado, PaintedbyEsther, who has worked with the likes of Viola Davis, Naomi Campbell and Kelly Rowland, popularized the technique on TikTok. To say she put the melted-blush method on the map would be the understatement of the century.
When she flawlessly executed the technique on Love Island USA’s Olandria Carthen in 2025, the look blew up. Shortly thereafter, everyone and their mother was itching to recreate the gradient look, including Patrick Ta, who referenced her technique in August of the same year.
The similarities between Ta’s recent branding of the product and Edeme’s established approach to the blended blush look have drawn considerable pause from the collective because the likeness is frankly uncanny. But it’s not just the stylistic symmetries causing tension: It’s everything the moment represents about the current treatment of Black beauty creatives.
Aesthetic exclusion is an all-too-common occurrence within the Black beauty space. Trends pioneered by Black creatives are routinely repackaged and posited as ingenious innovation without any due credit to speak of. In fact, Black women are often excluded from the narrative altogether. While this decorated pilferage has been happening for the better part of a century, it doesn’t make it any less harrowing or complicated, thanks to the advent of social media.
The inherently nebulous nature of both the makeup world and digital spaces in general has made it virtually impossible to claim clear ownership over trends. As the old adage states: There is nothing new under the sun. But that does not mean the dubious ways of the copycat have fallen by the wayside. It’s just a lot harder to call out now.
This entire aesthetic kerfuffle has raised many valid concerns regarding the ramifications of having your creativity siphoned and turned into a source of profit, a disillusioning offense regardless of intention. When you add in the racial dynamics at play, increasingly murky digital gray areas, and creative pilferage, you get a gnarly trifle of digital discontent and, in many such cases, blatant disrespect.
So What Happened?
In May, Patrick Ta began teasing the release of his “Transition Blushes,” a dual palette featuring one blush shade and a lighter transition shade. The system also includes a liquid brightening blush designed to seamlessly blend the blush into your concealer for a flawless blurred appearance. The issue? PaintedbyEsther is largely regarded as the face behind the faces of this trend.
As she admits, she did not create this technique, but her unique application and fondness for the layered blushing method went so viral that the entire beauty ecosystem shifted for a second. That is to say, it’s highly unlikely that anyone with even remote adjacency to the digital beauty space wasn’t aware of PaintedbyEsther’s influence on this trend. Least of all Patrick Ta.
The release of Ta’s blush system was met with many online critiques, and as many were quick to point out, Ta is seemingly capitalizing on a beauty moment that bloomed because of PaintedbyEsther. Even in her highly sought-after blush tutorial, PaintedbyEsther applies the blush to what she calls the “back of her palm,” a distinct phrasing that Ta then used in his own tutorial for his new transition blushes.
If that wasn’t enough, PaintedbyEsther also shared that she received a booking request from someone on Ta’s team to record her doing makeup. The request was denied.
Internet Reactions
One thing that PaintedbyEsther has been very clear about is that she did not create this trend and is not trying to claim ownership over the technique. But as the internet has pointed out, origin and influence are not mutually exclusive terms. Once you add in capital success and a history of prior transgressions, what may have once been viewed as a makeup artist taking inspiration now lands as creative larceny in the eyes of the public.
So whose idea was it originally
Now dual blush palettes are nothing new. Juvia’s Place has a similar blushing system, and transition blushes have been a thing online for a while now. As for the technique itself, PaintedbyEsther has given credit to Kevyn Aucoin for playing a huge role in the trend, something the brand has acknowledged in the midst of all of this controversy.
But it’s not just the creative colonization, as some online are calling it, that really stings. It’s the potential long-term ramifications of this decision that feel especially damning. Patrick Ta has trademarked the term “Transition Blush,” inherently limiting PaintedbyEsther’s ability to profit from the trend she arguably put on the map. The trademark effectively sidelines her from the very conversation she helped create. Eclipsing someone’s creative impact is one thing, but potentially limiting a Black woman’s earning power, intentionally or otherwise, opens the door to an entirely different set of concerns.
Painted by Esther’s Lore
It takes a certain kind of person to turn a makeup staple into an all-encompassing trend, but not only has PaintedbyEsther managed to do that, but she’s also turned one of the most exclusionary beauty products into a well-pigmented movement for darker skin. Blush no longer exists as something to fear, and PaintedbyEsther’s gradient technique is largely responsible for this shift.
Not the Inventor: But the Influencer
You don’t have to be the originator of a trend for there to be an acknowledgment of your role in putting a certain aesthetic on the map. PaintedbyEsther didn’t invent blush under the eyes, but she is the reason people started replicating the technique.
As social media users have pointed out, this isn’t just about the makeup; it reflects a larger pattern of behavior that has been called out multiple times over. Not only has PaintedbyEsther made the transition blush trend what it is, but she also turned blush, something those with deeper skin tones used to shy away from, into an accessible and exciting product for dark-skinned makeup wearers. This type of cultural influence and aesthetic is something that can’t be replicated.