Italian-movie-star style in the ’70s was the beauty brief that Peter Philips and Maria Grazia Chiuri discussed for today’s Dior autumn/winter 2024 runway. Fresh from the rehearsal that Philips described as “a bit of chaos,” the look was the opposite: “It’s all very controlled and ladylike,” the creative and image director of Christian Dior makeup explained backstage within the enormous temporary venue built each season at the Tuileries Garden in Paris. Inside, models with fluorescent pink smudges on their eyes prepped in front of mirrors with nets secured to the back of their heads, a way of protecting hairstylist Guido Palau’s French chignons until their first steps onto the runway.
“Maria Grazia has a great feeling about a woman’s beauty,” said Palau, who noted that this season she showed him a board of film references “all of the backs of people’s heads” that inspired a more cinematic spin. “It feels like she’s somebody from a movie,” he said, motioning to a model wearing the low chignon he created with hair swept back from the face (and no place to hide behind tendrils or bangs). “It’s not really a French twist or a French pleat,” he said, calling it “a very elegant shape.” The new Miss Dior is meant to look powerful and polished: “It feels very strong in its simplicity.”
After the DIY black eyeliner at the house’s haute couture show last month, there was still a sense of spontaneity to the freehand, not-too-perfect make-up application. A glance at Philips’s hand, covered in stains of water-based fluorescent pink pigment he keeps in his personal kit “to play around” with, was proof. “It has nothing to do with the show,” he admitted of the colour brushed onto eyes in petal-like shapes; it was completely absent from a collection filled with cream and gold and denim pieces, often emblazoned with hand-painted Miss Dior branding. Pink was, however, a favourite colour of Marc Bohan, who spent 30 years as the house’s designer and oversaw the birth of Miss Dior in 1967.
In 2024, the Miss Dior muse is radiant, Philips said, and wears Dior Forever Glow Star Filter as a highlighting base and a bit of Dior Addict Lip Glow Oil 000 Universal Clear on the lips. “It’s like you turn on the light on the inside,” he noted. Again, there’s no blush or contouring and, as usual, no mascara. When I asked if he considered a mascara-free gaze more quote-unquote fashion after seasons of skipping the staple, he pointed to the sexiness of mascara and its ability to make “you look more approachable” under the male gaze. He joked that the catwalk look “will get you a [magazine] cover, but it won’t get you a date.” To the house’s first female creative director, known for her statements against the patriarchy during shows, perhaps that’s actually a power move.