Dior Make-Up's image and creative director Peter Philips tells Vogue.co.uk beauty editor Lisa Niven about his first collection for the brand, what it's like working with Raf Simons and why he joined Dior after five years at Chanel.
Picture credit: James Cochrane
It's a perfect spring day in Paris, and outside the magnificent modernist show space that Dior has built in the Louvre's Cour Carrée, models with eyes painted rich shades of khaki, magenta, violet and sapphire sit in their dressing gowns on makeshift steps to take in the midday sun.
The man behind the make-up is Peter Philips. The Antwerp-born creative and image director of Dior Make-Up joined the house in early 2014, following a successful five-year stint as creative director of Chanel Make-Up and a subsequent year spent freelancing. The role not only requires him to work on the beauty looks for the ready-to-wear, couture, and pre shows, but also to oversee the creation and formulation of the brand's globally-stocked make-up products.
Picture credit: Indigital
I started working on this new collection the first week I started at Dior last year... It's not created like the fashion at all
Backstage at the autumn/winter 2015 show we're getting something of a preview - Philips has decided to use his first self-created collection for Dior to create the bold eye look for the catwalk, prior to its launch this August.
"It just worked, by chance. If there had been a need I could have created a new colour here for the show - mixed something up - but it wasn't necessary," he says. "I met with [Dior creative director] Raf Simons about four weeks before the show and he had these almost amoeba-like shapes in the collection, like an animal print that he'd mutated until it was almost unrecognisable. So I wanted the make-up for the show to be quite graphic and to use those kinds of shapes."
Accordingly, the models browsing the catering tables in the backstage area (a foot-tall jar of Nutella is proving popular) are almost unrecognisable thanks to solid blocks of metallic shadow applied from their lashes almost to their brows, in one of four new shades from the two eye palette quads Philips has created for the collection. Pretty Maartje Verhoef sports the khaki shade, Lexi Boling a reddish purple, and Kinga Rajzak an electrifying, opaque blue, created by mixing the powder shadows with water and applying with the sponge applicator that comes with each palette. Philips is known as a perfectionist. He has one of those kind faces that make him instantly likeable, but the look of concentration in his eyes as he works on each model speaks of a determination to ensure that each look is as carefully considered as the clothes.
Picture credit: James Cochrane
Picture credit: James Cochrane
"I thought about what the girls were wearing - so the model that had the slashed skirt with the blue shirt, of course she got the blue eye. Quite a lot of the models had green eyes, so for them I used the red or the purple shade, to bring out the colour of the eyes," he explains. "We just tried different things for the right fit with the clothes, it was like colour-blocking for the eyes. We did asymmetric nails to reflect the asymmetry in the collection also - one hand in one colour, one in another."
Picture credit: James Cochrane
A happy marriage between the fashion and beauty sides of the Dior business, then, as the projects that the two have been busying themselves with for months come together in one cohesive look, or series of looks. Is Simons - who Philips has known since the pair's university days in Antwerp - involved in any way in the creation of the make-up itself, I ask?
Raf and Peter have the same references - they come from the same city, they're in that Belgian set. They have a great understanding of each other
"No," says Philips, definitively. "Not really at all. They're two completely separate businesses. I started working on this new collection the first week I started at Dior last year and I don't think Raf had seen any element of it until four weeks ago. So it's not created like the fashion at all."
Picture credit: James Cochrane
Suddenly I was looking at make-up in an entirely different way. Making products women would love to use.
The two clearly share a similar aesthetic though - perhaps the reason that this new make-up has fit so seamlessly into the show today. Philips's bold but minimalist approach chimes happily with Simons's restrained take on Dior's classic New Look. Just as Galliano's Dior was outlandish, exuberant and attention-grabbing in comparison to Simons's modernist approach, Pat McGrath's catwalk make-up to accompany it was similarly dramatic. Philips, in contrast, tends to take a single feature as his focus and pair it with a bare face: strips of fabric applied to models' eyes in place of liner were an understated but modern take on beauty to accompany Simons's pared-back palette and crisp cuts at the spring/summer 2015 show last October. In fact, the stick-on eyeliner eventually became available to the public as the response was so positive. From the products he creates to his eye for a memorable but modern catwalk look, Philips seems an apt choice for Dior's Simons era.
Picture credit: James Cochrane
"There is a trust, certainly a trust," Philips says. "We've known each other so long. Raf and I are in two separate offices and we work separately, but it's great to come together six times a year for the shows. That's when we really work together."
Hairstylist Guido Palau, responsible for Dior's catwalk hairstyles - for autumn/winter 2015 a sleek, waist-skimming side ponytail - agrees: "They've known each other a long time, they go back a long way and I suppose they have the same references - they come from the same city, they're in that Belgian set. They have a great understanding of each other."
Perhaps Philips's success at predicting the next big trend in make-up - or rather the things that we don't even know we want until he puts them before us - is because has a background in fashion himself, having studied at Belgium's Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts before making the transfer to make-up.
"I used to come at make-up very much from a fashion angle, I thought about how things looked in a moment, about a look. I really didn't know much about beauty, I wasn't thinking about what women actually wanted," he says. "When I started working at Chanel, that was when I came to understand the products more. The formulas, the textures. And that's what I do now at Dior. Something I keep saying, something I've been using a lot as a quote, is: 'Women don't necessarily want to look fashionable, but they always want to look beautiful.' Everyone. Even someone who doesn't care at all about trends, they still want to look beautiful, because it makes you feel good - you know? So it made me understand what women want in their bathroom or make-up bag. It was like a door was opened and I could finally see. Suddenly I was looking at make-up in an entirely different way. Making products women would love to use."
Picture credit: James Cochrane
Picture credit: Dior
And that is just what he does. Philips is the man behind such smash hits at Chanel as the Le Vernis nail polish in the sell-out Jade, Mimosa and Particuliere shades, as well as the Illusions d'Ombre eyeshadows, and Dior are surely hoping for similar success. It is certainly a place in which he seems at home. This first collection is a rich mix of indigos, purples, silvers and bronzes, with nail polishes in colours to match the eyes on the catwalk - the electric Darling Blue and burgundy-black Nuit in particular demonstrate that same ability to see into the hearts of the beauty hall consumer.
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