Anya Taylor-Joy, Rachel Zegler, Alexandra Shipp and More Celebrate Rouge Dior in L.A.
“It starts and ends with the lips, always,” said Rachel Zegler, the face of Dior’s latest beauty campaign. She shares the spotlight alongside Yara Shahidi, Dilraba Dilmurat and Anya Taylor-Joy.
The fashion house was in Los Angeles on Monday night throwing a dinner party at Beverly Hills’ La Dolce Vita to toast the occasion and new line, Rouge Dior.
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What did Zegler have on tonight?
“We’re 999 with a velvet finish,” said the 22-year-old actress perfectly on cue.
“I’m the face of it now. I have to know!” she laughed.
Zegler will star as the lead in Marc Webb’s “Snow White,” out next year.
“It’s amazing,” she said of filming the project. “Much like collaborating with such an iconic fashion house like Dior, when you’re working with an amazing company like Disney, you just want to do justice to something that so many people care about. And I feel really honored that in my career with movies like ‘West Side Story’ and with ‘The Hunger Games,’ and now with ‘Snow White,’ I have really just gotten to be a part of something that so many people are so passionate about.”
Zegler wore a velvet and beaded dress from Dior’s pre-fall 2024 collection to match the look.
“I got a shout out to my girl Sarah Tooley, my amazing stylist,” she said. “We get together with Dior often because it’s, you know, the brand I work with the most, and I have such a wonderful relationship with them…We really wanted something that was not going to clash with red lips and red nails.”
Glam came first for the event.
“It’s 300,” Taylor-Joy said of her pout, standing with husband Malcolm McRae. “But it looks really different on every girl, and I like that.”
Indeed it did. Alexandra Shipp, recently seen in “Barbie,” had it on, too, complimenting her natural lip color. It was a much darker hue on Taylor-Joy.
“For me, a lot of the time when I go, ‘Oh, maybe a nude lip,’ it goes on, and it looks weird with my skin tone,” said Shipp. “I look ashy or it kind of washes me out. And when I put this one on, I was like, ‘Oh, this elevates my natural lip color.’ But also doesn’t take away from everything else that I’m doing.”
“Somebody’s natural nude might be somebody’s more dramatic nude,” said Peter Philips, creative and image director of Dior Makeup. “That’s the idea behind it. Everybody can own their own nude.”
“I’ve always kind of naturally gravitated towards darker nudes,” said Taylor-Joy, who stars in “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga,” out in May.
Kiernan Shipka opted for the same.
“I was like, ‘Are you wearing 300?'” Shipp said of Shipka. “She’s like, ‘I’m wearing 300.’ It works for both of us, and she’s much more fair than me.”
As Philips explained it, the reds are in fact a range of nudes.
“Nude is not beige,” Philips emphasized. “It can be colorful. It can even go deep in color. It’s how you wear it.”
There are 70 shades, made in velvet and satin fishes with refillable packaging. They were developed after surveying 400 women in the U.S., Europe and Asia, he explained. “We interviewed them and asked them all about their lipstick, expectations, their habits…It’s all about nudes in all its intensities. After COVID, the urge of our clients was to go to find back a naturality. There was a newfound awareness of being cleaner, being more caring, being more healthy. The formula itself has a really beautiful formula based on the floral essences and floral ingredients.”
Taylor-Joy’s very first Dior purchase was floral, she said — a Miss Dior fragrance.
“I love the way it smelled,” she said. “And what I love about that is I got to meet the perfumers and noses of Dior now. I said to them, ‘There’s something different about this formula. It’s not the same as when I was a kid.’ And they said, ‘Yeah, we took out the popcorn notes.’ And I’m like, ‘That checks out.'”
With a laugh, she added, “Of course the actress misses the popcorn in the perfume.”
For Philips, this lip launch didn’t come from “a floral inspiration, or an artist or a painting,” he said. “It’s really what women want.”
Inside the restaurant, serving Italian on “Little Santa Monica,” guests — including Awkwafina, Lucy Hale, Alexandra Daddario, Brie Larson, Simona Tabasco, Nikki Reed, Dominique Fishback, and Amelie Zilber — stayed warm, escaping the pouring rain outside. The joint was a favorite of Frank Sinatra’s when it opened in 1966, before closing down and brought back by Marc Rose and Med Abrous of Genghis Cohen. The martinis are strong and the menu is full of red sauce Italian favorites amid a dimly lit dining room full of nooks, red leather booths and a leopard-print carpet.
“I’m looking forward to having dinner like the old Rat Pack,” said Philips. “It’s nice to be in this environment, a piece of history and enjoying a good pasta.”
“We’re on the same page,” jumped in Shipp. “It’s always about the food.”
“Rainy L.A. day but it’s nice and sunshine-y and warm here inside,” said Zegler.
Launch Gallery: Anya Taylor-Joy, Rachel Zegler, Kiernan Shipka and More Attend the Rouge Dior Dinner
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