Class act
Actor, singer, dreamer and, now, beauty collaborator: Charlotte Gainsbourg has lent her pared-back beauty aesthetic to a new collection for Nars.
Idon’t wear a lot of make-up,” says Charlotte Gainsbourg via Skype from New York. It’s a somewhat surprising remark, given she’s dialled in from the global headquarters of beauty powerhouse Nars Cosmetics, and is surrounded by a fortress of hot-off-the-press make-up palettes and liquid tubes bearing her name. True to her word, her complexion appears refreshingly bare – a trace of concealer here, a smudge of kohl liner there – but there’s a subliminal beauty message permeating from her shaggy locks and angular features.
Like Louis Vuitton creative director and longtime Gainsbourg admirer Nicolas Ghesquière, François Nars, make-up artist and founder of the eponymous brand, couldn’t ignore her can’t-put-your-finger-on-it beauty following a chance meeting on the set of a photo shoot in 2014. “Straight away, the whole relationship was so open-minded and welcoming,” says Gainsbourg. “I didn’t know the make-up language, I didn’t know anything about products. I just remained truthful to who I was and what I wanted to wear myself,” she says of the 18-piece limited-edition collection that features second-skin tints and muted eyeshadow palettes inspired by her raw charm.
Perhaps it’s her remarkable lineage – her mother is English beauty icon, model and actor Jane Birkin; her father, the late French musician Serge – that has seen the 45-year-old search out projects, in film and now beauty, which push her out of her comfort zone. Her CV name-checks controversial indie films such as Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac and Melancholia, and this year alone she has three films in the pipeline: The Snowman, with Michael Fassbender; Ismael’s Ghosts, alongside Marion Cotillard; and the French film La promesse de l’aube. For now, though, Gainsbourg is turning her creative focus to her new album (she released her first song, a duet with her father, at just 13) and is spending more time with her family (she has three children to long-term partner Yvan Attal), who have even informed the shade names of the lip and cheek tints in her collection. “Each shade is very dear to me because this is named Jo, like my daughter Jo,” she says, picking up Nars Multiple Tints, a subtly hued cream cylinder for lips and cheeks. “This is named Alice, like my other daughter, and then this is called Jeanette, like my mother; my father used to call her Jeanette. So they’re very resonant.”
The texture of the products were also important to Gainsbourg, who insisted on consistencies “like paint” that she could smudge with her fingertips to more easily achieve her signature lived-in look. “I like feeling the product. I like to use make-up that you can’t see, to camouflage, hide spots and dark circles, but leaving some: it’s not meant to be completely clean,” she says pressing a hand to her cheek.
Leaning back in her office chair and resplendent in head-to-toe Saint Laurent (of course, she’s muse to Anthony Vaccarello, the brand’s creative director too), Gainsbourg presents an anomaly: a self-assured woman with occasional flickers of vulnerability. “I’m okay with the way I look, with my imperfections. I think today I find that as I’m not a natural beauty, you know, like a very obvious beauty, I deal with what I have.” And what could be more beautiful than that?