New York Magazine did a Q&A with Drew and it includes a video tutorial about using concealer.
Although celebrities like Blake Lively, Reese Witherspoon, and Cameron Diaz are eager to become lifestyle brands, Drew Barrymore isn’t in any rush. Despite penning 1,000-word odes to egg sandwiches, releasing a best-selling heart-based photography book, and launching her own beauty company, Flower Beauty, Barrymore says she doesn’t consider herself in the lifestyle-brand game. “If it organically morphed and evolved into that, it would be something,” she told the Cut. “But I don’t have any plans for that yet.”
She talked to the Cut about how she would respond to critics who don’t see makeup as empowering, her planned expansion into skin care, and how she’s just “trying to get shit done.” Plus, watch the exclusive video tutorial above, in which she teaches us how to achieve a modern take on ’90s beauty.
A few years ago, you were People Magazine’s “Most Beautiful Woman in the World.” How do you feel about beauty now versus then?
That’s so nice they put me on that list again. I don’t take things like that for granted or assume. But I feel no different, really. I think about beauty more in terms of how to make women feel good and empowered through this beauty company. I think about beauty on a business level. My own personal routine hasn’t really changed much.
What is your skin-care routine like?
I still wash my face twice a day. That’s probably my one sanctuary. I use a cleanser from the facialist Christine Chin. It’s super-expensive and that bums me out because I’m used to drugstore brands. I also love brightening serums now. I have the patchiest, reddest, most hideous/discolored skin, so those brighteners are really a lifesaver.
I’ve been a green-drinker for years. I’m part of that old, original posse of people. I love it. I go and buy fresh ones. I’m not into the pressed ones. I like the ones that are freshly made right there. It’s so amazing how much it affects everything.
But otherwise, it’s just toners, brighteners, and any under-eye love I can possibly get. I have such lack of sleep from raising kids. It’s more like a three-step skin-care routine. I like misters for revitalizing makeup; it’s a great way to wear makeup all day for work. It’s like, “What do you do at 3 p.m. in the afternoon?” You do a mister with a little bit of water, which gives it life again and adds dewiness.
Have you tried those newer cleansers, like the oil-based types?
I’m so scared to try the oil-based cleansers. I still have yet to find a sunscreen that doesn’t make me break out. So I feel like my choices are zits or brown patches. I don’t tan in the sun, so I’m not in danger so much. A lot of stuff just makes me break out.
I have a few cleansing oils that beauty-editor friends have given me, but I’m going to wait until after the pregnancy to try it out. I can’t take acne on top of the pregnancy and feeling like an Oompa Loompa.
So how do you create an “empowering” makeup company?
I don’t respond to a beauty company that’s selling that you have to wear a lot of makeup and is all about glamour against a gold-rain backdrop. That’s not real life. I much more like dancing around in my closet to music. I don’t love overairbrushing or weird fake jungles or CGI. I kind of just like flowers. I like white backdrops and stuff that’s just very grounded in reality.
When you see women who have warmth to them, that’s beautiful. It’s about a good heart and a smile that is coming across. I don’t really connect with a cold, aggressive-type thing. My personality doesn’t really magnetize to that. It’s more joyful than serious beauty. That’s what I did as a creative director at Cover Girl for seven years and what I try to bring to Flower Beauty.
It’s about sitting around in sweatpants — but we need to believe that we are women, too. It’s about dancing around your closet and getting ready for a date or to go to work; that’s more true to life.
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