LEO REILLY
If you’ve been loitering around TikTok, you’re familiar with the palpable thirst that is LoveLeo—a.k.a. Leo Reilly. The Los Angeles-born digital creator and musician (and son of actor John C. Reilly) occupies the heartthrob portion of Gen Z’s digital Venn diagram, with over a million followers and fans lipsynching his boppable tunes.
But most of Reilly’s elusive charm exists through his infinite personas and characters that customize everything from bite-size videos to clothes and beauty. One day, he’s flexing technicolour petals glued to his face and the next, he’s showcasing a minimalist look. “Changing how I look changes how I feel,” he explains. “I never like to look the same for a long period of time, so I’m always searching for ways to shake things up. Wearing makeup and painting my nails also tends to lead me down different creative and visual rabbit holes.”
Makeup-wise, when he’s not busy stealing his girlfriend’s fancy French mist, you can catch Reilly pencilling on colourful eyeliner to feel entirely mysterious and sexy, gender perceptions be damned. “Everybody should be able to express themselves however they want and put whatever they want on their face and body,” he says. “It’s going to take a long time to properly dismantle these masculine constructs, but our generation and the generations that follow us have to keep reshaping the beauty norms and ideals for men by just wearing what we want.” Reilly is championing a new wave of selfexpressionism, and we can’t help but log on for it.