“Everyone, good or bad, has beauty,” says singer and model Puma Curry, quoting her mom, the music icon Erykah Badu. “It could be a personality trait, or the way they move…beauty translates energetically.” Curry, 18, is sitting in a chair of the penthouse suite at The Roxy Hotel in Tribeca. The room, which carries an aroma of warm spicy incense, is lined with racks of brightly colored clothes, towering pumps, and white drawstring bags by Marni, the fashion house led by Francesco Risso. The designer and Badu recently collaborated on a capsule collection, for which Curry served as a model; last night, all three attended the Met Gala 2023 together. “I’m experiencing a lot of big moments right now,” says Curry mere hours before her first turn on this storied red carpet. “And I don’t want an A+; I want an ‘EE’ for ‘exceeding expectations.’”
Curry’s beauty transformation began with a dark brown bob that flipped at chin-level for a “li’l cute moment,” she says. Next, an emerald and gold lid outlined in bold black liner complemented her light green, almond-shaped eyes. Beneath her lash line on the left side of her face was a single strand of Swarovski crystals, like a teardrop frozen in time. “It’s giving expensive, iridescent fairy goddess,” says makeup artist Amanda Wilson. “We wanted her to literally drip in decadence.” And drip she did: From head to toe, hung light pink and white crystals and glass beads to complement her body-baring Marni ensemble, beginning with a flapper-esque hair piece and ending with silver gem-embroidered stilettos.
The ethereal look, which Curry describes as “something from a different universe,” is not exactly what you would expect from a first-time Met attendee. Then again, expecting anything from this family won’t get you anywhere. “You should never expect anything when it comes to my mom,” Curry continues. “She doesn’t even know what she’s going to do every day, how would you?”
Shortly thereafter, a petite Badu wrapped in an orange printed robe, her hair pinned back and tight, came out behind a set of double doors. The singer and songwriter smelled of sweet strawberry, an oil she picked up from the Muslim perfumery Madina in Brooklyn. Her eyes were awash in red shadow, which she brought down across the bridge of her nose and further diffused with illuminating powder. Her lips matched her eyes in that they featured a blend of frosted shades of pink and bronze. Her makeup artist, Michelle Dick, flew in from Texas to prep her skin with moisturizer, primer, and a nude base. Still, she says: “Badu knows what she wants.” The singer’s last personal touch was a sprinkling of freckle-like marks at the center of her face, a signature as of late.
Surprisingly, once on the red carpet, very few people witnessed Badu’s beauty look as it was hidden behind a full-face white fringe wig that matched her draping Marni frock—the entire ensemble recalled Karl Lagerfeld, or perhaps more fittingly, Karl Lagerfeld’s iconic hair. Later, Badu, who was tasked with deejaying the night, swapped her custom topper for a tall, metallic silver wide-brimmed hat. If you looked close enough, the under brim reflected a second set of burnt-red eyes and gold grills running across her teeth. The latter, made in collaboration with Royal Teeth Lab out of Atlanta featured old ebony and ivory profile cameos of Black women in Badu’s family, while the bottom row was accented with raw, freshwater pearls—another Easter egg for Lagerfeld. At every angle, Badu looked like she was transported from a different universe, indeed.
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