VoyageLA - Meet Stella Fixman

Today we’d like to introduce you to Stella Fixman.

Hi Stella , can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?

My journey into permanent makeup started through art. Before PMU, I spent years drawing portraits and studying details, symmetry, facial structure, and color composition in art school. Art gave me a very trained eye for beauty and details, as well as a very steady hand. I would notice the smallest things in a face that could completely change someone’s overall appearance and harmony.

When I first entered the permanent makeup industry over 10 years ago, the industry looked very different from what we see today. Procedures often appeared heavy, harsh, and unnatural. I believed permanent makeup should never replace makeup — it should simply enhance a woman’s natural beauty and help her feel beautiful even without makeup on. Makeup should always remain optional, something fun to add when going out, not something a woman feels forced to wear every day.

For me, permanent makeup is about improving symmetry, enhancing color, restoring balance, and creating more harmony in the face while still keeping the person looking natural and like themselves.

I remember people telling me that nobody would ever do lip tattooing because it would look unnatural. But I believed lips could be enhanced softly and delicately, just like eyeliner and brows. I wanted to help change the way people viewed permanent makeup and show that it could look elegant and customized for every client. After introducing a softer and more natural approach to PMU, I slowly became part of the artists helping change the industry and proving that permanent makeup could look much more natural, delicate, and harmonious than people were used to seeing at that time.

My artistic background made me extremely detail-oriented and perfectionistic with my work. I’m also a Virgo, so every little detail matters deeply to me. It’s very important that both my client and I truly love the final result. I’ve always been very demanding of myself and wanted every client to receive the kind of result I would personally want for myself. If something didn’t feel perfect enough, I continued studying, learning from different techniques, and refining everything until I eventually created my own personal style and techniques that became recognized for their natural results.

What originally started as a creative passion and hobby slowly grew into something much bigger. Since childhood, I always had this feeling inside me that I wanted to make people feel more beautiful and more confident. Over time, clients connected with my philosophy and artistic style, and my schedule became fully booked. As more artists became interested in my techniques and approach, I started teaching and eventually opened my own academy.

Over the years, I was invited to teach masterclasses internationally, become a speaker at PMU conferences, and judge major championships around the world. I’m honored to represent the American PMU industry globally while continuing to evolve, learn, and create natural results that help women feel more confident and beautiful in their own skin.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?

Honestly, I never really felt like my journey was something negative or heavy because I truly enjoyed every step of it. From the beginning, I started permanent makeup more as a passion and hobby than as a business. I genuinely loved the process of making people feel more beautiful and confident, and I think clients could feel that energy and passion from me as well.

Even at the very beginning of my journey, I started in a very small room, taking clients one by one. Little by little, I realized my clientele was growing more and more. As my business expanded, I moved into bigger spaces and eventually opened my own academy.

Over time, larger companies and schools in the industry began noticing my work. One of the big moments in my career was being invited by an International Academy to represent their company, which made me very proud. Later, I realized I had grown even further professionally and personally, and that I was strong enough to continue building my own path independently. Many companies offered collaborations and representation opportunities throughout my career.

What started as something small slowly grew into something much bigger than I originally imagined. I never entered this industry thinking about building a huge business — I simply wanted to create beautiful work and help people feel better about themselves.

Even today, I still genuinely enjoy working with my clients and creating results that make them feel more confident and happy. For me, that feeling is still the most rewarding part of what I do.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?

I see permanent makeup as a form of art rather than just a beauty procedure. Every face is unique, and I believe PMU should enhance someone’s natural features instead of completely changing them.

For me, permanent makeup is about improving symmetry, enhancing color, restoring balance, and creating more harmony in the face while still keeping the person looking natural and like themselves.

I also believe permanent makeup can work almost like subtle facial sculpting when it’s done correctly. By improving symmetry, enhancing certain features, and restoring balance and color, the entire face can appear fresher, more lifted, brighter, and more harmonious.

Sometimes a soft brow shape can visually create a lifting effect for the face and open the eyes more beautifully. Lash line enhancement and eyeliner can make the lashes appear fuller and the eyes look brighter, more expressive, and more defined. Lip blush can bring more freshness and life back to the entire face. When the lips have a healthier, softer, and more balanced color, the whole complexion can appear brighter, fresher, and more youthful. Sometimes even a subtle lip enhancement can completely change the harmony and glow of the face in a very natural way.

My work is very focused on harmony, softness, healed results, and natural beauty. I’m especially known for natural lip blush, hyper-realistic brows, eyeliner techniques, and correction work. I truly enjoy correcting old permanent makeup and transforming it into something much softer, more balanced, and harmonious.

I also enjoy working on more difficult and detailed cases, especially facial corrections after previous procedures, asymmetry, discoloration, or other imperfections. Those kinds of cases require patience, technical skill, and a strong artistic eye, which is something I genuinely love.

While I can perform other tattoo-related procedures, I chose to specialize specifically in the face because I believe when someone focuses deeply on one area, they can truly master it. The face is very delicate and artistic, and I know this is where my strongest skills and passion are.

One thing that is also very important to me is healed results. In permanent makeup, the true result is not only how the work looks immediately after the procedure, but how it heals over time. That’s why I share a lot of healed work on my Instagram and professional pages. I believe healed results show the true quality of an artist’s technique, softness, color balance, and long-term outcome.

What’s next?

I believe the beauty and permanent makeup industry should always continue evolving, improving, and becoming more advanced and artistic. I never like standing still creatively or professionally. I’m always refining my techniques, researching new approaches, and looking for ways to create even better healed results for my clients.

My clients already know that I constantly bring new ideas, techniques, and improvements into my work, and many of them are always excited to see what’s new next. I think growth is one of the most important parts of being an artist. Trends, technology, pigments, and techniques continue changing, and I love staying involved in that evolution.Most importantly, I want to continue creating work that helps people feel more confident, beautiful, and comfortable in their own skin while still looking natural and like themselves.

Stella Fixman - Permanent Makeup Artist