Everything Grimes does is on her own terms—and pregnancy is no exception. From announcing the news in bold, #FreetheNipple fashion to getting candid about the realities of expecting while bracing to release her next album, Miss Anthropocene, the Canadian art-pop singer is as real as it gets.
“I don’t know if everyone has this, but when I got knocked up, my skin just turned super red and was constantly covered in stuff,” she explains, a patchwork floral-print We Are Hah shirt layered over her growing baby bump and her strawberry-lemonade lengths woven into a set of loose twin braids. “Doing makeup when you’re pregnant is just way harder for some reason!” On a quiet morning in West Hollywood, Grimes is taking Vogue through her weird and wonderful beauty routine, from her pregnancy skin-care secrets to her out-of-this-world eyeliner designs.
“All my skin-care stuff is something I started doing in the last year cause I was like, ‘Oh shit, I’m 30—actually, 31 now—I better start taking care of myself,’” she explains, before pausing for a beat. “Well, whatever. It’s showbiz.” After supercharging her complexion with iS Clinical’s brightening vitamin C serum and a Shangpree eye cream imported from Korea, she gives herself a quick facial massage with a rose quartz roller. “This is ‘chill vibes’ skin,” she explains, spreading on a translucent veil of Biore UV Aqua Rich Watery Essence sunscreen before adding sheer coverage by way of NARS’s lightweight Pure Radiant Tinted Moisturizer.
“I don’t have to be virtuosic on a guitar at this point in time, so it’s kind of a brief window [that] I can have luxurious nails,” says Grimes of her onyx talons. Demonstrating remarkable dexterity with her hyper-extended claws, she then overlines her lips with her “everyday” jet-black lip liner, traces Pat McGrath Permagel Ultra Glide Eye Pencil in Blitz Brown on the waterlines, and swirls on a Givenchy Prisme Libre Loose Powder compact she discovered via a tutorial from South Korean makeup artist Pony. “I used to have, like, a great unibrow—like, fully a unibrow—but I did kind of wreck it in high school, cause it doesn’t really come back anymore, which is sad to me,” she says, filling in her naturally full arches. “That was a mistake.”
“I like the idea of looking pretty, but ravaged,” says Grimes, name-checking the video game character Eva in Metal Gear Solid 3 as the inspiration for her haphazardly smudged eyes. After blending a deep vermillion shadow below her lower lashes and edging highlighter into the inner corners of her eyes, she applies loose glitter to her center part. “Being pregnant is great for your hair—I’ve had a lot of regrowth,” she says. “I burned my hair off right before I got pregnant, but it’s kind of been solving the situation.”
Taking her makeup to new heights, Grimes proceeds to make her face the canvas for her intricate hand-drawn illustrations. “I do a lot of painting and drawing, so if I have a show or something, I sort of draw things on,” she explains, etching a small heart on the outer corner of her brow before free-handing a mesmerizing mass of fluid, winding lines across her forehead with Marc Jacobs’s Magic Marc’er Precision Pen. “It might be pretty strong on the forehead…” she says, examining her work with a grin. “Yeah, if you have bleached hair and you pull it back it's less crazy. Well, it’s still crazy, but it’s a little bit more sci-fi.”
Yes, Grimes is taking beauty—and pregnancy—to another dimension. And really, would you expect any less?
Filmed at The West Hollywood EDITION
Grimes in We Are HAH shirt.
