Jorja Smith on Becoming Dior’s New Makeup Ambassador
Jorja Smith is feeling a bit under the weather. “I thought I was going to be OK, so I apologize,” she laments to the crowd at this year’s Governors Ball Music Festival inside Randall’s Island Park. But a summer cold is no match for the celestial falsetto of the Grammy- nominated R&B star, who has taken to the stage in a burnt-orange leather crop top and metallic trousers, with coral-tinted eyelids to match. Smith unleashes her lush, velvety vocals, seamlessly crooning the songs on her debut album, Lost & Found (2018)—including “Blue Lights,” the politically charged single that launched her career.
Forty-eight hours later and Smith is still in the throes of the bug, she says, intermittently humming along to Frank Ocean’s breezy “Pink + White,” which is playing in the background of a cavernous Brooklyn photo studio. Congestion and all, her complexion remains inconceivably poreless. “My relationship to beauty has always been a bit confused,” admits the new Dior makeup ambassador. “I didn’t ever think I’d be the face of anything,” says the 22-year-old, who grew up in Walsall, West Midlands, with a British mother and a father of Jamaican descent. “At school, the majority of the girls were white and slim with long hair, so that’s what I wanted to look like.” Learning to embrace her hourglass figure and pillowy pout, however—while nurturing a raw talent that saw her write her first song when she was just 11 years old—has helped the London-based singer earn international attention not just from designers such as Maria Grazia Chiuri, who designed three custom Dior gowns with Smith for her performance at the Guggenheim International Gala, but from Kendrick Lamar. And Bruno Mars. And Drake, who reached out to Smith on Instagram two years ago to ask her to be a part of his More Life mixtape.
“There’s something new that’s happening now,” Smith continues of the cultural landscape. “Everything is being celebrated—different looks, hair, and bodies. Everyone is beautiful,” she explains, nodding to a long-overdue, industry- wide pivot toward broader representation that makes her more than just an ambassador for primers and foundation. “She’s a role model for women around the world,” says Peter Philips, creative and image director for Dior Makeup, who has already begun working closely with Smith to expand her face-painting repertoire. “I’m definitely getting experimental with color and doing more with my eyes,” she promises. Fans who witnessed the Toronto finale of Smith’s recent North American co-headlining tour with Colombian-American artist Kali Uchis— a girls-only bill that made a powerful statement about who can sell tickets in a male-dominated genre—likely noticed this evolution when she sported a rusty wash of eye shadow and a matte brick-red lip to cover Erykah Badu’s “On & On” with Uchis. “But skin is my main thing,” she insists. “As long as my skin looks natural, we can play with the rest.” Smith will have plenty of opportunities to get creative as she braces to release her first music since Lost & Found, which made her something of a red-carpet fixture on the awards circuit. “She can wear streetwear and she can wear gowns,” the designer Olivier Rousteing said of dressing Smith for the Grammys in a gold, curve-hugging custom Balmain dress. “You cannot put Jorja in a box.” It’s an apt description of what to expect from her impact on the beauty world, and her new material. “I can’t wait to put it out,” she says of the songs she’s been writing over the last two years while ruminating on growing up with the scrutiny of fame. “This is a new chapter.”
Originally Appeared on Vogue
