Dior Beauty Drops Limited-Edition Complexion Perfector to Coincide With Paris Fashion Week Show

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The Dior Autumn/Winter RTW show at Paris Fashion Week was a dazzling spectacle. Models walked underneath a colossal sculpture by Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos created from mixed media and fabric scraps that called to mind one of Joan Miro’s biomorphic shapes or an elaborate sea creature piñata, while kaleidoscopic lights flashed and danced through the space. For Dior Creative and Image Director Peter Philips, this was not a time for contour or color; somewhat counterintuitively, the bolder the look, the more likely it was to get lost.

Of Maria Grazia Chiuri’s three muses for the 1950s-inflected collection—Christian Dior’s sister Catherine (the inspiration for Miss Dior perfume and the subject of a fascinating book by Justine Picardie), “La Vie En Rose” chanteuse Edith Piaf, and actress/singer Juliette Greco—Philips zeroed in on the latter. “She had a tone that was sad, but strong at the same time,” he says. He wanted a nostalgic look—one that would also reflect the Maria Grazia Chiuri’s simultaneous deconstruction and celebration of retro silhouettes as well as her theme of female resilience and power—but not a “too pretty” smudged lid or a classic cat-eye. Instead, he did something unexpected: an unusual twist on the smoky eye with dots of black liner (DiorShow 24H Stylo in Matte Black) on the inner and outer lower edges of the eye, turned down instead of upwards. “I wanted it to look a little raw,” he says, “a little melancholic.” To keep the effect as stark and simple as possible, the rest of the face was perfected with foundation but otherwise left bare.

To coincide with the show, Dior Beauty has dropped a limited-edition run of its Dior Skin Mattifying Papers, which come in tidily packaged packets of 100 Dior-printed sheets with a built-in mirror. Philips used them on the models for the show to take down shine (his technique involves using a brush to press them into skin and evenly absorb oil) and claims them as one of his eternal backstage essentials. Since public touch-ups are having a moment—at Giorgio Armani’s Autumn-Winter show, models carried compacts down the runway, and Rihanna’s mid-Superbowl performance setting-powder application is already the stuff of legend—the timing couldn’t be better. Grab them before they’re gone.

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