Unpacking the Politics Behind BLUSHGATE: PaintedByEsther v. Patrick Ta
Why collaborate when you can colonize?
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Unpacking the Politics Behind BLUSHGATE: PaintedByEsther v. Patrick Ta
Is it Columbus Day already?! This year is really flying by.
Since the whole Fifteen Percent Pledge thing Slutty Founder has been overdue on handing out our lashings. I should have known it would only be a matter of time before someone in the beauty community decided to act out!
Patrick Ta, I’m so sorry, but you’re next up, boo.
But first, let me back up for a sec.
Before I was even aware of who PaintedbyEsther was, I was aware of her work.
Esther, or PaintedbyEsther is the makeup artist popularly known for her transition blush technique that has been living rent-free on our beauty feeds for…I feel like forever? Her signature high-watt blush looks have been painted on celebrities like Doechii, Tyla, Saweetie, and more recently Love Island’s Olandria (which includes her 2026 Vanity Fair Oscars After-Party look).
Frankly, Esther’s signature technique dominates any result where “blush” was typed in the search engine.
So when Patrick Ta (no stranger to controversy like not paying POC creators including Jools LeBron of ‘very demure’ fame; here’s a great video that sums up his pattern of behavior) announced the launch of his “Transition Blush” to be released on May 28th, demonstrating a technique Esther is widely credited for, social media had some veryyyy big feelings.
Who Gets To Own Transition Blush??
Contrary to what’s circulating, Patrick Ta does not own the concept “Transition Blush” exactly—that’s the Internet playing telephone and trademarks don’t quite work like that—but he has filed a Class 3 Trademark for the product itself “Transition Blush” (Class 3 trademarks cover beauty/personal care/grooming products). He can’t own the technique or the phrase alone.
According to USPTO, the trademark for “Transition Blush” is live, but still pending. Technically, there remains an opportunity for a third party to challenge or oppose the trademark (ex: if Esther or another opposing party demonstrated prior commercial use of “Transition Blush” before his filing date), but the hard truth is that unless Esther used the phrase commercially prior to him, it makes legal opposition difficult. She popularized a technique, but didn’t have a product attached to it (that we know of) :(
In my utopia she would have filed the trademark just to hold it. It hurts knowing it’s just around $300 bucks per class.
While Patrick not owning the technique itself doesn’t block Esther from her signature, it does monopolize the language, which is what I, as well as many people find so icky. If Esther ever wanted to launch a product and call it by the name most associated with her work, she couldn’t.
Isn’t that sad?
Who knows what she may or may not have been cooking up before PT beat her to it. Do we assume she didn’t have anything coming down the pipe simply because he beat her to the punch?
Patrick Columbus
The comments defending Patrick Ta argue that the technique isn’t specific to Esther; that he’s a smart business person and that they don’t understand the backlash.
His opposition has started calling him “Patrick Columbus.”
In a timeline of events, the same day he releases his third demonstration video in which he shows off his transition blush technique (nearly identical to Esther’s, even reciting some of the exact language she used in a previous video) Esther enters the chat with a now 2.8M+ view video giving her side of things.
Here is how everything went down in her words:
Esther makes it clear that she has never once claimed to have invented the technique. She didn't claim it because she knew it would be met with, ‘Well, you didn't start it, you didn't create it. How dare you?’
Esther has had multiple strange experiences with Patrick Ta's camp (two or three, by her count). She has spoken about them to friends who can attest.
She’s in LA when she receives a booking request from Patrick’s business partner, who got Esther's number through a hairstylist Esther had recently collaborated with. Esther normally only accepts direct bookings through her agent, but this time made an exception.
The booking was for a “do and go,” which means you do the makeup and leave. It is not a one-to-one lesson. However, on the day of the appointment, her agent forwards a request that Patrick’s partner wants to RECORD A VIDEO of Esther doing the glam.
Esther cancels the booking as it “didn’t sit right with her.” Learning and teaching is different service.
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Poor girl. Her voice is literally trembling!!
Like clockwork, Patrick quickly and (most likely) expectedly as a part of his colonization strategy (colonization used as a placeholder for the time being until I think of something else to call whatever this is)—catches wind of the backfire.
He posts a video with a caption that clarifies that he had been working on transition blush since 1+ years ago (as if he probably wasn’t stalking her for 5), and acknowledges PaintedbyEsther’s talent, whose username by this time, has been spammed endlessly in his comment section.
Idk if I’m one of few people that registered “she popularized this look through Olandria” as a shady and backhanded way to downplay the history and impact of Esther’s signature glam that had been popularized long before Olandria even dominated our feeds. He knows that. Isn’t he a makeup artist?
I also want to call out Patrick’s calculated use of Black models for his demo videos—which is so blatantly intentional that it REEKS. We can’t ignore that one of the reasons this makeup look has been so impactful because of the unique and eye-catching way the pigment sits on darker skin—something Esther has championed and democratized.
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I mean PLEASEEE. He’s not worried about being inclusive any other fucking time and here’s proof.
Literally not one black girl until it’s time for the Transition Blush to come out LMAO.
Delusional!!
Last in his offenses, I want to swing back to his copying of Esther’s verbiage in his beauty tutorials.
Commenters pointed out how Esther says in order to do her technique, she puts the product on the “back of her palm” and how Patrick can be shown doing and saying the same thing bar for bar in his eerily similar tutorial:
The funny thing is, Esther has clarified that she misspoke when she referred to it as “the back of her palm.” This stood out to me as one of the more interesting acts of theft; that he used this verbiage in particular.
Here’s a video from August 25th 2025 when he does what he calls “his version of PaintedbyEsther.” Seems like he had no problem attributing the work to her before a product was involved. Yet above he’s saying he’s been doing this technique since 2021.
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It’s like he wants to wear her skin! I’m literally shaking, like I have chills.
Why not collaborate with her on a launch? A limited PaintedbyEsther x Patrick Ta blush trio? It would have really done numbers! PT rides the wave from borrowing her technique, they make the drop limited and hype, while Esther doesn’t have to risk the infrastructure.
(Danessa, my dear if you’re reading this—the girls are saying this is your moment!!!!) Danessa told me she loved my work, btw 😌. Be jealous!
Unfortunately, sharing isn’t good enough for people this greedy. Why collaborate when you can colonize? Now nobody gets anything. Cause this will likely flop.
On that note, there’s something about this whole situation that is uniquely American. It’s a microcosm of the same society where someone will burn a field just so their neighbor can’t harvest it, even if that means they don’t eat either. Cut off their nose to spite their face. It’s so dumb lmao. This is the behavior Patrick Ta defenders are calling smart business by the way.
While a piece of me was ALMOST inclined to applaud PT for being so nimble and timely, I actually think this launch is backfiring in a way he and his team gravely miscalculated. This launch including the blowback was definitely something they planned for, likely anticipated, and yet STILL decided to move forward on thinking it was worth the risk.
I want to point out something a friend of mine Angela Ubias (exited founder of Common Heir fame) pointed out:
Their VP of Product being a Black woman leads me to think that may be why they felt insulated enough to move forward on this. They probably didn’t bank on Esther having enough pull to make it hurt where it counts, and thought the noise would die down. That’s what makes it so disappointing.
Team Patrick Ta really thought they knew who they could play with.
Did they actually think nobody cared about Esther enough? Did they not anticipate that people would be sooo turned off that the product might flop? Girl.
Okay, you own the mark for this bullshit, but now what?
The Colonization of Ideas Really Is Just Business (Unfortunately)
I’m not sure what Patrick Ta is doing in revenue (reports float somewhere between $30M-$70M), but something I observe and have thought about a lot lately—even separately from this—is that the most successful brands, directors, screenwriters, hit-makers, etc…are that way because they’re often the best at colonizing.
It really is a matter of art and commerce and how they converge—art often not at the speed in which commerce demands.
Here's what I've come to accept. The art we love, the brands we buy, the sounds we can't get out of our heads—NONE of it is accidental. There is a machine behind this shit to make even the un-calculated look calculated. That’s why when some no name person with 3 followers comes on the internet in a manic state and said such and such stole from them—I believe it.
The biggest and brightest businesses don’t sit in brainstorms waiting for inspiration, they surveil and go idea farming. Watching who’s building something that’s working, extracting it, employing their own bigger, better infrastructure and manufacturing a launch moment is literally a part of their workflow. That’s why you’ll read some version of this article time and time again.
The colonization of ideas is absolutely a feature of the American success formula, not a bug.
There is also the matter of why Esther hasn’t been able to productize her own genius first. I can only assume it’s overwhelming, but more simply — she may just not have access to the infrastructure. Should we fault her for it? I really want the internet bystanders who’ve never built a thing but somehow consider themselves brand-building geniuses to consider this: just because you see someone or their work everywhere, that doesn’t necessarily equate to the means or bandwidth they have to support future venture—especially as an artist and especially in CPG (dare I remind you of the throes of Pat McGrath running Pat McGrath?).
Do you yourself get any richer by being insensitive about it?
The unfortunate thing about professions like makeup artistry or celebrity styling, for that matter, is that at the end of the day, a service job can only scale but so much unless you’re able to productize that talent. Not everyone is made for that / wants that / has access to that—and even though business is business, it’s also okay to say —at least in regards to this Patrick Ta thing: it’s kind of fucked up.
Personally, I think Black creators need to stop being pioneers at shit (if we can help it) and I want to see us steal, lie and gaslight straight to the bank like everybody else. It’s not like there are any repercussions! It’s the American way!
MLK Jr. had his dream, honey and I have mine.
Anyways, this is getting long so to wrap this up:
- This is crazy.
-This wouldn’t be half as bad if we didn’t have Esther’s version of events.
-His team reaching out to book her for a tutorial before launching this product is INSANE to me.
-There is something so sinister about the way Patrick Ta and team went about this that leaves a bitter taste à la Khloe Kardashian v. Destiney Bleu.
-I hope this launch flops.
-We’ll see what the sales say. I will be watching.
-We know Esther didn’t invent the technique. NEWSFLASH! I don’t care.
Footnote: For you guys puzzled as to why Jackie Aina has seemed to flip her damn lid and is supporting him: (whispers) Jackie and Patrick are friends lol.
A little birdie / one of our readers spotted them hitched up at the birthday party of a British talent manager held at Lavo in WeHo (which I’m elated it’s now closed, for separate reasons) “where the bartenders were mean in their little leotard outfits.” I’m told they were sitting together at the bar having glasses of free prosecco “laughing and doing a little 1-2.” This was over a year ago, but it looks like they’re still going strong.
As my friend put it, which feels particularly apropos to this piece—”all of this is a game of friends behind the scenes, and a who’s who.”
Unfortunately, I don’t trust us enough to successfully cancel Patrick Ta, but I’m hopeful that at minimum I’ll see a step back from him for now. He needs a time out, and I’m tired of his games!!!
(Dare, I confess, I actually find his products stunning).
It’s a shame!
Rooting for you Esther!!! <3
Amazing read
Great read as always. I always did side eye Patrick ever since the Avonna situation. I too hope the launch flops. I figured Jackie and Patrick were friends LOL. Glad Esther is seeing the love we all have for her.