The evening’s violet-tinged mouth played off the chartreuse yellow of the tulle dress. Goodwin enhanced Stone’s freckles for an ultra-natural effect, while the handmade Louis Vuitton choker dialed up the glamour.

 

How Emma Stone Got Ready for the New York Premiere of Poor Things 

The star of Yorgos Lanthimos’s exuberantly off-kilter riff on the Frankenstein tale turned up to the red carpet in a pearl-studded Louis Vuitton dress and shimmery lids—an off-screen ode to the character’s free spirit. 

DECEMBER 8, 2023

Bella Baxter, the curiosity (played by Emma Stone) at the center of Yorgos Lanthimos’s neo-Gothic romp, Poor Things, cuts a severe figure in waist-grazing raven hair and heavyset brows. But the character herself—a living, breathing experiment on her way to self-actualization—is really a tangle of contradictions. Her delicate beauty skews feral, her sexual hedonism is braided with the absurd. Even before the film’s New York premiere on Wednesday evening, Stone’s performance had already been drawing praise. (A snippet of a frenetic dance sequence in the trailer hints at just how much the performance is a finely calibrated, full-bodied feat.) But with a winding awards season likely ahead, how might an actor carry the spirit of this wild child onto an otherwise buttoned-up red carpet?

Emma Stone as Bella Baxter in Poor Things, sporting an epic braid and deep brows. Nadia Stacey designed the character’s hair and makeup look.

 COURTESY OF SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES.

Stone’s premiere look offered an early glimpse: all the polish you’d expect of a seasoned Oscar winner, with a glimmer of Bella’s idiosyncratic verve. That played out as a diaphanous yellow Louis Vuitton dress, a jeweled orchid worn on the neck with a Degas-style ribbon, raspberry lips and pearlescent eyes, and the actor’s back-to-red hair twisted into a deconstructed knot. It helps to have a creative team that has shepherded Stone throughout her career. “Since 2007—Superbad, her first film,” says makeup artist Rachel Goodwin, speaking in the car as she and hairstylist Mara Roszak shuttled from Stone’s hotel room to the screening. Together with stylist Petra Flannery, the three women have the push-pull of collaboration down. “I always say we’re kind of like a band,” Goodwin 

In tracing the trajectory from Poor Things to premiere, Stone credits the film’s hair and makeup designer, Nadia Stacey, for such beautiful work—raw skin and runaway hair lending to that unbridled quality. “Because Bella, my character, is so without shame and self-judgment, I think that applies to beauty in a huge way, and confidence around beauty,” Stone explains via email. “So with this press tour, Rachel and Mara and Petra and I have been talking about a kind of inspiration of Bella and that sort of simplicity but still having fun with color and youthfulness.” 

The evening’s violet-tinged mouth played off the chartreuse yellow of the tulle dress. Goodwin enhanced Stone’s freckles for an ultra-natural effect, while the handmade Louis Vuitton choker dialed up the glamour.

 

For Goodwin, that translated to a “minimalist approach to the makeup, being really strategic especially in regards to the skin,” she says of her emphasis on transparency. “That’s what [Yorgos] loves about people. He likes seeing them and not the makeup.” Skin prep was key: steam-filled shower, BioEffect hydrogel mask from Iceland (“I’m obsessed”), hyaluronic serum for a lush, juicy effect. Next came a light touch of Pat McGrath Labs’ Skin Fetish foundation. “It was actually designed to look like skin because she used it backstage on fashion shows where designers did not want that made-up look,” explains Goodwin, who added a ruddy cheek, as if flushed from the cold. The goal was “embellishing versus perfecting.”

From left: The requisite pre-event fries. Louis Vuitton accessories, plus concealer and Lust Gloss for the road.

COURTESY OF RACHEL GOODWIN.

For the eyes, Goodwin settled on a “super, super elegant flick”—refined and subtle in deep brown. She first nestled a pencil along the lash line, and then followed with the “Pat McGrath liquid liner, which is my favorite in a pen,” she says. The lids got dusted in a new shade of the ChromaLuxe Artistry Pigment (arriving December 15): a creamy, foil-finish product first created last year as part of a particularly cinematic Pat McGrath Labs collaboration. “I wanted to use the pearl highlight because it was the perfect complement to the dress,” Goodwin adds. Ditto the pearl-studded Victoriana brooch on the ribbon necklace. 

Stone, in full splendor.

 BY BEN ROSSER/BFA.COM FOR LOUIS VUITTON.

There was one recognizable nod to the Poor Things makeup. “The brows were very much a big piece of Bella’s character,” says Goodwin, who adapted that bold-stroke gesture to suit Stone’s now-red hair. Her technique involves back-and-forth penciling and combing to fully integrate the pigment; a slick of brow gel anchors the arches in place. “They’re a softer version, a bit more groomed of course—but they’re definitely present.” 

A tinted lip courtesy of Pat McGrath Labs was the finishing touch—another shared link between screen and carpet. In the movie poster, Stone wears the brand’s MatteTrance lipstick in Forbidden Love; at the premiere, the orchid-colored lip was created with a blotted-down lip pencil in Cosmic Vibes, topped with Lust Gloss in Secret Lover. It was a color-wheel play, the yellow dress and violet mouth, and a jolt of fun to suit a celebration that, post-strike, had finally arrived. “The mood,” says Goodwin, “was just jubilant.”

VANITY FAIR