Beauty Moment: Edie Campbell Does Not Miss Her Long Hair—and Other Beauty Confessions from Fashion’s Favorite Risk Taker

As fashion’s reigning chameleon of choice, model Edie Campbell has mastered the art of the fearless transformation: In recent years, she’s morphed from a Françoise Hardy–esque dolly bird with pillowy bangs for Hedi Slimane’s spring 2013 Saint Laurent campaign into the punkish Joan Jett–inspired muse behind Marc Jacobs’s fall 2014 runway look and, more recently, an English-rose-with-an-edge courtesy of a strawberry blonde shag.

In New York City on a recent Thursday evening, the art school grad and designer favorite was sporting her latest coiffing experiment: a texturized, honeyed crop curated by editorial whiz Guido Palau. “I’m in a fortunate position where I don’t have a job that requires me to go into a board meeting and be taken seriously. I can be ridiculous,” she laughs, explaining her up-for-anything approach to beauty—which, most recently, has seen her assume the role of moody “rock chic” muse in YSL Beauté’s new Black Opium perfume campaign.  In the atmospheric ad, Campbell offers up a black leather- and smudged eyeliner–fueled spin on the classic Opium imagery that debuted in 1977.

Edie is plenty serious about some things, though, including horseback riding (“that’s what I’d do all the time if I could”); writing (see this spring’s highly entertaining Coachella travel diary for Vogue.com; and pursuing her curiosity for the arts. On a private tour of “China: Through The Looking Glass” at the Met last month, Campbell took special notice of sketches YSL Beauté had done for the launch of his original Opium eau de parfum almost 40 years ago. It helped connect more than a few dots for the 24-year-old, for whom scent is inextricably tied to memory. “That’s the incredible thing about fragrance,” she explains—“that sensual emotive part that lets you move through a space and leave a little trail behind you. It’s what people perceive of you, but don’t necessarily register.” Here, Campbell waxes equally poetic about her unexpected eyeliner trick, why she doesn’t miss her long hair, and how to successfully wear a sheet mask while enjoying an in-flight cocktail.

I’m sure you get asked this all the time, but what is your approach to your ever-evolving beauty look?
“Fashion is meant to be fun. That is the point; to express something. And sometimes, a wig’s just not good enough! Also, when there’s someone like Guido [Palau], or Steven Meisel or Grace Coddington asking you to cut your hair, why would you say no? These supercreative, wonderfully talented people obviously know better than you!”

Do you ever miss your long hair?
“Not at all. When you have long hair, you’re always collecting it—on your clothes, in the shower. My hair never gets caught in my bag strap now, and I don’t own a hair brush. Plus, I love getting my hair cut or colored. It’s my favorite thing to just sit in a salon in midday with other ladies who lunch and watch a whole season of Game of Thrones. It’s great. I’m also working on American Horror Story.”

Are there any products you’ve found that help offset all the styling on set and backstage?
“Philip Kingsley’s Elasticizer is a dream. It’s so thick and goopy and I slather it all over my head and sleep in it once every few months. It’s great if you’re hair is bleached.”

What is your first fragrance memory?
“The first time I became aware of fragrance I was about thirteen and all of the sophisticated girls at school were like, ‘this is my signature scent.’ That’s when I first realized that there was this potent thing that allowed you to be like, ‘this is me; this my aura; this is the cloud I operate in.’ ”

How do you wear your fragrance now?
Typically only at night because on my days off it’s not really necessary as I’m usually only wearing SPF. I’m a real burner. I have to use SPF 100—especially when I ride. I don’t really wear a vast amount of makeup either because so much of my life is spent having makeup put on me so a lot of times, I just like simple things, like curling my eyelashes, a bit of brow gel, and some Touche Éclat. I also really like Charlotte Tilbury’s eye shadows. She has a lot of brown-y,  aubergine-y colors, which are really good for me because I usually put makeup on in a slapdash kind of way so I can scrape on a little here and there, put on a bit of black mascara, and I’m done.”

What is the best beauty tip you’ve ever received?
“There’s this one French makeup artist who always says, ‘Well darling, if you don’t have any makeup, you just take your lighter and your champagne cork and you light the champagne cork and rub [the blackish residue] all over your eyes like eyeliner. Then, you put Vaseline over it.’ It’s a great beauty tip—and a great lifestyle tip!”

Do you relate to the rock chic archetype that’s often associate with you?
“Yes, because . . . I’m British. It’s an island and counter culture has been so important in creating this mentality of an underdog coming up and becoming part of the mainstream, so the idea of being as freaky and as weird as possible is really celebrated. There’s definitely a costuming and a drama to Britishness. What I don’t like about the whole ‘rock-’n’-roll’ thing is that it can be sort of excluding sometimes. Cool is not just fear dressed up in black. [The photographer] Cass Bird just Instagrammed that. It’s such a good line! But yes, in a general sense, if you asked me who the people are that I look up to, a lot of them would be wearing leather.”

And with that: Any summer travel plans or beauty advice?
“I’m going to Norway with my mother and sister to eat salmon and march across the glaciers, and then I also need to go somewhere hot because if I stay in England, I’m not getting any sun. If I’m flying, though, I will be bringing water, lip balm, [Elizabeth Arden] Eight Hour Cream Hand Treatment, and I quite like to wear a sheet mask on the plane. I put one on and order Bloody Marys. I look like a monster!”

The post Beauty Moment: Edie Campbell Does Not Miss Her Long Hair—and Other Beauty Confessions from Fashion’s Favorite Risk Taker appeared first on Vogue.