“There is a vibe for more softness,” says Peter Philips, creative and image director of Christian Dior Makeup, who incorporated greater fluidity and nuance in Jonathan Anderson’s first show for Dior. The look is about “more blending, not so many harsh lines. It’s like reading a poem.” Philips drew inspiration from the silhouette of the Eiffel Tower at sundown; racing across Paris in the early morning; Michelle Pfeiffer’s face in Dangerous Liaisons. He translated that feeling into flushed cheeks, alabaster skin, and a glossy mouth, “like after you just ate a peach.”
“Historically, when the world feels industrial, hard, or frightening, fashion often swings toward the soft, the historic, and the hypersentimental,” says fashion historian Serena Dyer. Romantic beauty offers a retreat from a diffuse sense of catastrophe and global turmoil—an opportunity to indulge in a fantasy of innocence and unspoiled nature. The Romanticism of the early 19th century, after all, “was partly based in this idea of glorifying nature,” says Colleen Hill, a curator at the Museum at FIT. “Being out in nature and having this healthy flushed look is certainly part of that.”
Surrounded by all this, I am tempted to experiment and schedule a visit from Jamie Coombes, a makeup artist for Dior. “ ‘Natural makeup’ is just as complicated as heavy makeup,” Coombes warns as he lugs a suitcase of approximately 500 products up the three flights of stairs to my apartment. He proceeds to spend a solid 30 minutes prepping my skin with micellar water, and then patting on moisturizer and serum with a series of brushes, which he says will prevent my skin from overheating and also makes me feel like ASMR is happening on my face, all before finally cracking open a bottle of foundation. A wash of soft gold eyeshadow and a sweep of mascara come next. When he reaches for a tube of blush, I panic slightly, but he assures me that it’s all about the placement: It should be above the cheekbones, close to the eye, rather than on the apple of the cheek (where I’m already rosy). In the end I look like myself, except…better, like I’m using the Paris filter on Instagram, or I’ve been painted by Renoir. Without meaning to, I sit up straighter. Coombes says I look like Cupid.