“Italian movie star style in the ’70s” was the beauty brief that Peter Philips and Maria Grazia Chiuri discussed for today’s Dior Fall 2024 ready-to-wear 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 prep 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,” says Palau, who notes 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 says, 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 says, 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 a still a sense of spontaneity to the freehand, not-too-perfect makeup application. A glance at Philips’s hand, covered in stains of water-based fluoro pink pigment he keeps in his personal kit “to play around” with, is proof. “It has nothing to do with the show,” he admits of the color brushed onto eyes in petal-like shapes, which is 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 favorite color of Marc Bohan, who spent 30 years as the house’s designer and saw the birth of Miss Dior in 1967.
In 2024, the Miss Dior muse is radiant, Philips says, 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 notes. Again, there’s no blush or contouring, and as usual, no mascara. When I ask if he considers a mascara-free gaze more “fashion” after seasons of skipping the staple, he points to the sexiness of mascara, and its ability to make “you look more approachable” under the male gaze. He jokes that the catwalk look “will get you a 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.