Peter Dundas Teamed Up With Anastasia Soare for His “Effortless” New Beauty Line

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It’s not not unusual for high-end designers to enter the beauty business. But it’s not every day they team up with some of the biggest names in makeup—Anastasia Soare, Queen of Brows, and her daughter, Claudia—to build a namesake brand. To start new line Dundas Beauty, however, Peter Dundas and Evangelo Bousis chose to do exactly that.

“Having a stamp of approval of someone like Anastasia in the beauty industry was really important to us,” Bousis tells Bazaar. After a chance meeting in L.A., followed by a more official sit-down in Qatar (Soare was there doing clients’ brows at Sephora, naturally), the Dundas co-founders’ partnership with the Anastasia Beverly Hills CEO was under way. “It was like the stars aligned,” says Dundas.

After four years of development—the pandemic and supply-chain issues caused what Bousis calls a “logistical nightmare”—the line has finally come to fruition. Frustrating as the delays were, Dundas says, they “also gave us that moment to really, really think about [the line], and really get this down 100 percent.”

The result is a minimalist assortment of five gender-inclusive products: the Hydratan Tinted Moisturizer ($45), Undercover Enhancer Concealer ($29), Anonymous Bronzer ($32), Day-to-Night Eye Pencil ($18), and Pumped Lip Moisture ($23). They all capture Dundas’s philosophy of effortlessness. “When it looks like you’re trying too hard, it just doesn’t feel convincing to me anymore, and certainly not very young, either,” the designer says.

Dundas and Bousis sat down with Bazaar to discuss the long-awaited line, including the Soares’s influence, what they predict will be the hero product, and more.

What advice did Anastasia give you as you were developing Dundas Beauty?

Bousis: She was like, “This is your beauty line. You have to take care of it and make sure that it corresponds with the fashion, with Peter and what he wants, and what the vision is, and why you guys created what products you would want to both use.”

Product is really important for her, [as is] packaging. She’s so detailed. Her and Peter have a lot of similarities with that. Claudia and would I sit there having to deal with the two of them, like, “All right, we’ve got to do the work part of it while you guys are doing the creative part.”

How did you land on these specific products?

Dundas: Need, personal use. We wanted something that was easy, gender-neutral, that everybody could use. Inclusivity is something that’s very, very important. Easy packaging for everybody, and would hopefully make them look and feel great.

Bousis: We really wanted to do something that men and women would love. That’s why, with our first drop, the products are called “enhancers,” because it’s more about just enhancing your own beauty and having this jet-set, effortless, glamorous look that Peter does so well.

I love that the line is intended for all gender identities. How did that influence the products and formulations?

Bousis: We knew that men didn’t want cakey makeup. I don’t think any girl wants cakey makeup, either. And so there was a balancing act of what can work on men’s skin, or what the need would be for men. You’re not going to find a lot of guys who are going to put on moisturizer before they put on a concealer. They will miss that step. That’s why we wanted the concealer to have so much moisture in it. You’ll see: It never cakes, it’s so transparent, and with perfect coverage. Stuff like that was really important when we were creating the formulas with Claudia, who really helped us with the formulations.

Dundas: You can’t mess up. It works on different skin textures, as well. And [inclusivity] is honestly something that I’ve always felt I was doing through my clothes, as well. I know some people always think about Dundas as ultrafeminine. But guys very often want men’s versions of the women’s pieces, and the other way around as well. When I’ve done men’s capsules within Dundas, they end up being sold to women’s departments.

What was the hardest product to get right, and why?

Bousis: The tinted moisturizer.

Dundas: I don’t know how many times we saw that one go back and forth.

Bousis: It’s going to be our hero product, for sure. Peter believes in it, Claudia does. It’s just so good, and there’s nothing really like it on the market, I think, that has the perfect hydration, perfect pigment color. It adjusts to everyone’s different skin color, so it’s so good. A friend of ours’ mother got a hold of it—she’s a woman that a lot of people know—and she’s obsessed with this product. She’s like, “It’s the only thing I wear, because I don’t like makeup, and if you wear makeup when you’re older, it cakes.” The other day she called me, like, “Can you please send me another bottle?” I’m like, “Calm down, it’s coming out on Tuesday, now you need to start buying it.”

What was your inspiration for the packaging?

Dundas: Yellow has always been my signature color. When I first started doing yellow dresses—and I don’t even remember why, because I’ve been doing them for so long, and now they find their way into every collection—I remember that somebody from the sales department said, “Oh, the yellow dresses never work,” and then all of a sudden it’s like I had celebrities wearing them and they were taking off.

Bousis: We met this art director who was like, “You know, Peter, you should do your labels in yellow because you’re the sunshine in fashion.” So I always give him so much shit about that—I’m like, “You’re the sun.” When he's grumpy, I remind him that.

Dundas: Never happens.

Why did you want to do a plumping lip balm, as opposed to a gloss or oil?

Dundas: I love kissing and I love beautiful lips and all that. But gloss is not so much my thing. And we wanted this to be personal and something that’s easy to apply as well.

Bousis: And also that both men and women would wear, that it wouldn’t turn away one customer and separate the other. And yeah, everyone wants a little bit of a plump. Getting that product [right] was hard, too, just to make sure that it was the right amount of tingle and not too much tingle. We had a lot of burnt lips there for a second.

What are your personal makeup routines like?

Bousis: Okay, I’ll tell you this because I’m the one who wakes up and does it every morning and then forces Peter to do it. I’m like, “You need a little bit,” and he’s like, “You’re so mean.” So we start off with the tinted moisturizer. I put on a little bit of a moisturizer, my basic moisturizer that I use, and then I use this on top, and it just evens out everything and just gives you a little bit of a color, pep in the step. Then I use the Undercover after. I think this is perfect as a spot corrector and also for underneath the eyes.

And then I like to use bronzer everywhere. We’re very much into a tan look, in case you didn’t notice. And so also for contouring, there’s days that I’m like, “We need a little bit of a contour. We’re a little bit puffy today.” And the lip comes everywhere with us. Peter’s the guy who puts on the eyeliner, he’s way better.

Dundas: I’m the eyeliner guy. It’s just a touch of rock ’n’ roll as well. Again, it goes back to my mood boards. I always have music on my mood boards and performers from the ’70s and stuff, and it always feels like that gives that extra edge. It’s something that’s been used by Jagger and stuff. The coolest rock stars used eyeliner, so that feels like it was already the gender-fluid way, before any trend or any mention of that.

Dundas Beauty is available now at Revolve and Amazon.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for length and clarity.

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