How I Got Ready for the Met Gala With a Virtual Makeup Artist—And More

Forget the glam squad. Nordstrom’s VP of creative projects, Olivia Kim, gets gala-ready with a virtual makeup artist and the latest wave of tech-focused beauty aids—as told to Celia Ellenberg.

As someone who grew up with a Korean mother, I take skin care very, very seriously. But even though I’ve been doing the K-Beauty ten-step virtually since birth, I consider myself to be low-maintenance. I love makeup—on other people; unless I have a big event, I go about my daily life makeup-free.

The Met Gala, of course, qualifies as a Very Big Event, and it’s time to step up my routine and try something appropriately adventurous. But since I’m also busy, rather than sampling multiple lipstick swipes at a beauty counter, I opt to swipe my iPad and iPhone using the latest apps and high-tech beauty services instead. It’s becoming ever easier to dial up professional makeup looks and even custom-blend cosmetics this way, which will allow me to both maximize results and economize on time.

With just a week to go, I’m less concerned with matching my lipstick to my neon-green embroidered Molly Goddard dress than I am with whether certain colors look good on me. So I download L’Oréal’s Makeup Genius app at my office in Seattle. Using facial-recognition software, the app lets you test out hundreds of different products and curated makeup designs—such as Lara Stone’s dark-rimmed lids or Naomi Watts’s pale-pink lips at last year’s Cannes. The best part: The lashes in each look are animated so that you can literally bat your eyelashes on the screen! For lipstick inspiration, I download the YouCam Makeup app, which uses similar technology but provides beauty-centric character options—“Bashful,” “Foxy,” “Swan”—once the camera registers your features. “Ravishing” gives my avatar a pretty berry lip and a subtle pink blush that is so realistic, it’s almost scary.

For foundation, I try the MatchCo app, tap, tap, tapping my way through the camera phone prompts on my wrist, forehead, and cheeks as an algorithm works to calibrate my precise skin tone. Then a cute animation of a customized bottle pops up to let me know my formula is ready. What’s not to love about an object with your name printed on it?

The basics resolved, I order the sci-fi-looking Mink makeup pen online. The syringe-like contraption comes with three vials of dye—cyan, magenta, and yellow—that you can mix to create literally any makeup color you can think of that can be blended into a white base. It’s a huge win for anyone trying to avoid countless hours swatch-testing different pigment shades. As a test drive, I take a photo of the wrapper of the Japanese strawberry Kit Kat bar on my desk, load it into the app, select the best color match, and mix up my own lip cream following a precise formula. It’s quite a few steps for my fingers, although I never leave my chair. But the staying power blows me away. It’s a lock for my Met lip.

With my new crop of products in hand, I fly to New York and head straight to the Mark Hotel for a restorative facial from Natura Bissé, which, amazingly, takes place in a bubble, giving new meaning to the term pop-up. Pumped full of 99.995 percent purified air, the isolated chamber’s environment is free of polluting particles and allergens so as to optimize the skin-plumping, wrinkle-reducing treatment.

The finishing touches: hair and nails. Before securing two little buns on either side of my part, I am lucky enough to preview Dyson’s Supersonic hair dryer (its first-ever beauty offering, due out in September), which adapts the force and effectiveness of the company’s ubiquitous circular fans to a small handheld device for an ultra-fast—and quiet—blowout. For my nails, manicurist Mei Kawajiri embellishes colors from the limited-edition Cirque nail polish collection I curated for the “Manus x Machina” exhibition with hand-painted flowers.

I am ready to go, oxygenized, glamorized, and thoroughly customized.

 

Hair: Akki; Makeup: Yumi Lee; Manicure: April Foreman
Set design: Peter Klein. Produced by Tallulah Bernard at Rosco Production
Photographed at Chateau Marmont, chateaumarmont.com

 

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