Last week, celebrity make-up artist Sofia Tilbury visited Dubai and we got the chance to sit down with her and learn a bit more about her career and what it’s like to work with her aunt – make-up artist, brand owner and beauty guru, Charlotte Tilbury. Sofia, who is currently the product and content creator for the brand as well as a brand ambassador, gave us an exclusive rundown of her everyday go-to beauty look and now you can recreate her look with these simple steps!
Step One: Goddess Cleansing Ritual (1 & 2)
Charlotte always says, ‘you can’t have a beautiful painting without a beautiful canvas’, so it all starts with skincare. My daily routine starts with cleansing using a rich, balmy cleanser. The Goddess Cleansing Ritual is ideal, because I tend to wear quite a lot of makeup with work, and this makes it super easy to take off!
Step one is a citrus oil cleanser that melts your makeup away and smells amazing. I always try to double cleanse, but I do get stuck in a rut sometimes. Sometimes I’m lazy! Around 3-4 times a week, I use step two, which is a purifying charcoal cleanser, which helps to remove any impurities. If your skin’s quite dirty from pollution outside and you get clogged up pores, this is great to deeply cleanse and extract impurities, keeping your skin squeaky clean.
Step 2: Magic Serum Crystal Elixir
Next is the skincare product I can’t live without: Charlotte’s Magic Serum. It’s probably one of my favourite skincare products! It contains beautiful ingredients like polyglutamic acid, which is four times more hydrating than hyaluronic acid; niacinamide, which is like a bootcamp for your pores, and Golden Vitamin C, which helps to brighten and even the complexion without causing irritation. When I apply this, whether it’s on my own skin or on a client’s skin, the complexion looks instantly hydrated. There’s an instant glow!
Step 3: Magic Eye Rescue
Then I will use an eye cream. It’s so important to hydrate the eye area, especially if you suffer with dark circles and puffiness. I’m obsessed with Magic Eye Rescue. It contains time-release retinol, which really helps to depuff your undereye area. I never do makeup without it.
Step 4: Cryo Recovery Eye Serum
This I love! Charlotte’s Cryo-Recovery Eye Serum. It tightens, lifts, depuffs and smooths—everything good! It has a cooling metal applicator that I love to use to massage my eye area. I tend to get quite puffy in the mornings, and this always helps! You can also use it with the new Cryo-Recovery Face Mask over the top to enhance the cooling, lifting sensation.
Step 5: Magic Cream
Then I use Charlotte’s Magic Cream, which is one of our most famous products, ever. One jar sells every two minutes around the world! It was born backstage, when Charlotte used to mix it to transform the look of models’ tired, dull looking skin during Fashion Week. Celebrities love this product for the red carpets. It’s like an instant turnaround to make the skin look plumper, smoother and hydrated. I use Magic Cream straight after my serums and eye creams, and it instantly floods the skin with moisture. I love to use it as a primer for makeup as well. It helps all your makeup glide on so beautifully.
Step 6: Airbrush Flawless Foundation
Airbrush Flawless Foundation is my go-to for base. It’s a full coverage foundation, but the thing is, I’m not a full coverage girl. I don’t like to plaster my face with heavy foundation. This is blendable, buildable and lightweight, and I feel like a little goes a long way. I use a tiny amount where I need it most for a flawless, poreless looking complexion. It also has skincare benefits as it is blended with as much plump-effect peptide as Charlotte’s Magic Serum. It feels so hydrating and comforting on the skin! It also contains an ingredient called Air-Cool™ which gives a refreshing, cooling sensation, so it’s great for humid places like the Middle East!
Step 7: Hollywood Flawless Filter
When I’m having a really natural day and I want to look fresh and glowy, I use Hollywood Flawless Filter. Charlotte always says it’s like a social media filter in a bottle! It’s like the Paris filter from Instagram on your skin. I like to wear it alone with a little Magic Away Concealer to blur, illuminate and smooth the look of my skin, but you can also use it like a glow primer, on the highpoints of your face like a highlighter, or mix it in with your foundation to create a dewy effect.
Step 8: Airbrush Flawless Finish Powder
Airbrush Flawless Finish Powder is literally like my baby! I can’t live without it, and it’s one of our bestselling products. I like to use shades 1 and 2, but I usually stick to shade 1 underneath my eyes and around my T-zone, leaving the highpoints really glowy and dewy. It’s so finely milled, it glides on like silk and it’s infused with rose wax and almond oil, so it feels so hydrating on the skin too. It never looks patchy of cakey. Whenever I visit the Middle East, I always carry this with me everywhere to set my base in place, because it is so humid!
I can’t leave the house without this product. I’ve been known to ask my Uber to turn back around and take me home if I’ve forgotten it! If I had to choose, I’d say this is my favourite product.
Step 9: Brow Cheat
The next step is brows. Charlotte recently launched her Supermodel Brow collection, including these amazing new Brow Cheat pencils, which I’m obsessed with. I use the shade Natural Brown. These are just amazing, especially if you want to mimic the appearance of natural hairs at the front of your brows or in any sparse areas. The micro-fine pencil allows you to create really precise, hair-like strokes, and it’s so easy to use!
Step 10: Brow Fix Sculpting Gel
To fix my brow in place, I use the Brow Fix eyebrow gel. It helps to lift and set everything in place, like a mini brow lift look. I love good brow gel, and this one does not budge, so I also sometimes like to use this on its own.
Step 11: Pillow Talk Luxury Palette
I love all of Charlotte’s eye products. She’s got so many amazing eyeshadows, so it’s really hard to pick one, but I’d say for me, the Pillow Talk Luxury Palette is hands down my favourite. This is one of Charlotte’s bestselling eyeshadow palettes, and I helped her create it in product development. The whole Pillow Talk world is inspired by super easy, flattering, natural, nude-pink colours that suit everyone. The world is obsessed with Pillow Talk! What I love about this palette, is that you get gorgeous metallics and mattes, so you can dial the look up or down from day to night.
Step 12: Pillow Talk Eyeliner
The next product would be eyeliner, which I’ve changed recently. I was always really into creating a soft brown feline flick with a Classic Eyeliner pencil, but I’ve recently started using the Pillow Talk Eyeliner. It’s a beautiful reddy-brown shade that behaves almost like an eyeshadow. It brightens up your eyes. Brown or black eyeliners are great for adding definition, but this makes your eyes look bigger and brighter, and it makes your eye colour pop. I get so many complements on my eyes when I wear this shade!
Step 13: Pillow Talk Push Up Lashes Mascara
This is Pillow Talk Push Up Lashes mascara. When I did Salma Hayek’s makeup recently, she asked me to bring three of these to her house. She’s obsessed. Everyone is obsessed with this! It gives you the lashes of your dreams. Charlotte wanted to create a mascara that gave you the longest, most luscious, separated lashes, and funny enough, that result came with the tiniest, most precise wand. This brush is paddle shaped, so you can load the formula onto the root of your lashes, then twist and turn, using the little bristles to comb through and lift the hairs!
Step 13: Tinted Love Lip & Cheek Tint in Petal Pink
The next product is always in my handbag—the lip tint in Petal Pink. This is such a natural way of adding colour to your lips. It’s a very hydrating lip tint formula and it accentuates your natural lip colour, so your lips look bigger, which I love. I usually like to add a Lip Cheat lip liner with this, and I love to wear either Pillow Talk original if I want a fresh look, or I like Pillow Talk medium for a deeper, sweeter effect.
Step 14: Beauty Light Wand in Pinkgasm
Then, blush and bronzer. Everyone’s wearing blush at the moment! The blush I like to use is the Beauty Light Wand in Pinkgasm, which is currently sold out everywhere. It gives a really gorgeous, highlighted blush effect on the cheekbones and makes you look fresh and healthy in seconds.
I’ve also got a beauty hack for people who can’t get their hands on Pinkgasm right now. You can take Hollywood Flawless Filter and mix it together with a beautiful pink lipstick shade like In Love with Olivia or Dancefloor Princess to create a soft, dewy, cream blush that looks stunning on the apples of the cheeks.
Step 15: Airbrush Bronzer
For bronzer, it depends on the look I’m going for. If I want a glowing contour, I’ll use the Hollywood Contour Wands. If I want a sun-kissed effect that will stay all day, I’ll go for Airbrush bronzer. It is infused with Hyaluronic Acid, so it creates a gorgeous, soft-fused contour on the skin and the shades mimic the effect of the sun on all skin tones. It never looks too orange or ashy, which I love!
That’s my everyday look! I think the way I’d round this look up is by saying it’s pretty, fresh makeup with a lot of easy, nude-pinks. I’m all about a glowing makeup look. That’s my thing.”
