Dior Just Co-Signed The No-Mascara Look For Fall

You heard it here first: Wine-stained lips? In. Mascara? Officially out (and not just because TikTok says so). Last night, Bustle went backstage at the Brooklyn Museum to get an exclusive look at the hair and makeup for Dior’s RTW Pre-Fall 2024 show. The inspiration for the night was German-American singer and actress Marlene Dietrich, who brought androgynous style to the mainstream and inspired the beauty look for Maria Grazia Chiuri’s newest collection. “The look of the show is [to show the] duality between masculinity and femininity,” Dior Makeup creative and image director Peter Philips says. “One side of [Dietrich] was extreme glam, one side of her was wearing mens suits and playing with masculinity and reinventing it.”

There’s something alluring about a girl whose skin is fresh, yet makeup is slightly smudged. “If you do a glam eye or a glam lip, it becomes a different narrative,” Philips says. “With a raw face, with ‘leftover’ makeup, she has a hidden side. Is she already done with her makeup or is it leftover from the night before? It’s a more mysterious story.” The key to mastering this look and looking artfully undone instead of just plain messy, according to Philips, involves three steps: keep the skin bare (Chiuri was adamant about avoiding any shimmery highlight, blush or contour); skip mascara (“Whenever you use mascara, there’s a texture and it becomes feminine,” he says); and blot two different shades of lipstick onto lips with an eye shadow brush for a “just bitten” effect.

For a natural-looking base, Philips used Dior Forever Glow Star Filter as a primer, then applied Dior Forever Skin Glow on top — he credits this combination for adding a luminosity to the skin without looking like full-blown highlighter. The lip was meant to emulate the look of a “strong woman” who’s just finished drinking a few glasses of wine (“It’s very Parisian,” he notes). For a wine-stained effect, models had Dior Rouge Dior Forever Lipstick in Forever Night applied in the center of the lip with an eye shadow brush, then the same lipstick in shade Rose Blues brushed on the outer corners for a slight ombré finish.

Lead hairstylist Guido went for a more high-maintenance look for models’ hair, curling their strands up in hot rollers, pinning them back into retro-looking waves, and finishing with a spritz of Zara Hair Spray; the entire process took around four hours. The glamorous, vintage-inspired curls and sleek waves provided the perfect contrast for the effortless-looking makeup — proof that when it comes to trends, we can all channel our inner Marlene Dietrich and go towards whichever side of the spectrum we want.