admin Tonight’s Club Magic event will be slightly more extroverted, with plenty of lenses pointing her way, from Joe Bishop’s Vogue-exclusive Polaroids to straight-up paparazzi. When I say that even though it was a lot of no-makeup-makeup at shows again, I do like a little glamour for going out, Moss agrees. “Yeah, me too. I always have a black eyeliner in my bag, always—even back in the day.” She also carries a lipstick, and Tilbury passes me a teeny tiny Pillow Talk small enough to fit in my little jacket pocket. “You don’t have that?” Moss asks. “You need that.” I tell her that a minimalistic ’90s trick she told me about once—just dabbing a bit of lipstick on cheeks—is all over the runways (including Rabanne this week). “I’ve always done that with lipstick, I feel like I’ve got too much on, so I do this,” she says, tapping the center of her lips and then patting color onto her cheeks. Tilbury confirms: “Yeah, you’ve always done that with lipstick.” It’s one reason I arrived for this Ritz pre-party with a strategically bare-ish face, and ask Moss what she would choose from the product buffet for me, and maybe, just maybe, apply.
“Oh no,” she politely declines, then pauses and reaches for something: “Rocket Girl,” she says, naming the new lipstick designed in support of the Elton John AIDS Foundation (Charlotte Tilbury is the founding beauty partner of The Rocket Fund). Moss swipes the ballerina-pinky nude onto my lips, and I wonder if I should try her method. “Yeah, do it,” she advises as I bop Rocket Girl onto my cheeks without looking. “Perfect, darling, you’re ready,” she says. “You’re ready to go.” I perk up, proudfaced. “Yeah, yeah, honestly, look,” Moss says, handing me a Beautyverse palette to see myself in the mirror. When I tell her I usually do winged eyes, she gets it: “For later, black eyeliner, yeah…” For now, I’m walking on air.
In under an hour, we’re at the party, where walls are covered in blushy metallic curtains and disco balls are being worn like Daft Punk helmets. I look at a fresh Polaroid of Moss, then at a Polaroid of myself, then I think of how many magazine pages of her I’ve collaged, of staying up watching her Primal Scream “Some Velvet Morning” music video, of the serigraph of her face I bought from Dimitar’s art school project, of her book standing on display at home, of her Saint Laurent billboard that appeared outside my window slightly before I received an invitation to be here, of doing my friends’ makeup in the style of Moss. Because she’s cool. Forever. Then I think of something Tilbury said in that suite: “Kate has a magic. I know Kate always hates me talking about this, but it’s true. There’s only one Kate. I’ve worked with the most beautiful, most incredible people in the world, but there’s only one Kate.”
