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“Baz dreamt up an enchanted forest,” says Vogue Contributing Fashion Editor Max Ortega of working with director Baz Luhrmann on the much-anticipated musical performance at last night’s 2024 Met Gala. For Luhrman’s take on this spring’s “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion” exhibition, Ariana Grande and her Wicked costar Cynthia Erivo arrived in the Great Hall as the surprise performers haring the stage were 30 dancers and a 40-person choir (not to mention an entire orchestra), all decked out in glittering beauty.
It required a team of pros, as usual. “Working with Michael Arden and the choreographers Creelo, we developed characters,” says Ortega of filling the stage with a “gold-soaked Sleepy Orchestra, pre-Raphaelite Choir, horny male satyrs and glitter-dusted Nymphettes.” He credits Bumble Bumble Global Artistic Ambassador Evanie Frausto and makeup artist Raisa Flowers for bringing the moment to life. “For the first time the performance began the moment guests walked in,” says Ortega of a trio of acts that started in the museum’s Great Hall, moved into the call to dinner during cocktails, and “culminated in the awakening of our Sleeping Beauty, Ariana.” Backstage, Frausto worked with his team to deliver pure gold—literally.
“We have some real gold leaf in the hair, which is super fun,” says Frausto of painting Bumble and Bumble’s BB.Gel onto performer’s natural hair to provide grip for the tricky material. “Gold leaf is so hard to work with, it s really flimsy, and any little breeze of wind just makes it fly away and flake,” he explains. “So it s really about securing that down for us.” For dancers, he focused on creating a fantasy of natural texture. “It s like these fairies have been living in the woods their whole lives, and they re just kind of cool and undone,” he explains. “We re just leaning into more natural, very soft, clean, and pure textures. For people with a beautiful Afro texture, we’re stretching it and giving this nice, airy look.”
Ahead of heat styling with gentle crimps, “we are actually moisturizing and hydrating it still with BB Prep, and I m using a lot of the BB Hairdresser’s Invisible Oil Heat Protectant Leave-In Conditioner Hair Primer, which is very necessary,” he says of focusing on the long term health of strands before adding styling products like Thickening Dryspun Texture Spray to finish the look. It’s all in support of a friend, as well. “I m so excited that it s Ari, I just found out today,” he admits of the top-secret process. “I love her. I do her hair sometimes and we have such a cool, nice relationship—she s so fab and kind.”
In the makeup section backstage, “more glitter!” is what Flowers mentions was her biggest direction from Luhrman during the ideation process. “I really wanted to do something that was bright, but glittery, but also electric, but serious in a way,” she says of looking to the fashion archives for signs. “It was inspired by the John Galliano 1993 RWT show,” she says (a fitting choice since Grande wore Galliano for one of her performance looks). “I m always inspired by Galliano and Pat McGrath’s makeup, even Pat doing Margiela Couture and really creating that AI effect,” she says of the beauty moment that rocked the world this year. For the Met performance’s so-good-it-looks-filtered gleaming beauty, Flowers leaned on Milk Makeup Cream Highlighter Sticks. “They were really important thing to add that shine for me,” she says, crediting Setting Spray as her trick to deliver a hydrated gleam. “It gives you shine to the skin, but also it gives you a long-lasting set to your makeup.”
For the “trippy Tinkerbell” eyes she painted on performers, a canvas prepped with Hydro Grip Eye Primer set the stage. “It needed to be really packing a punch base, basically,” she says. On top of “so many shades of blue” duochrome shadows, she kept skin believably flushed with Lip + Cheek Cream Blush + Lip Color in Flip “to make them look blushy and sleepy in this way, so it was natural skin.” When Grande and the performers arrived in front of the starry guests, “I thought it was really fab,” says Flowers. “I could actually see the makeup in the performance.”
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