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Love is a tricky, beautiful business—and one that makeup artist Lucia Pica looked to when envisioning Byredo’s first-ever makeup collection, First Emotions. “My head kind of went to the first emotions of when you fall in love,” says Pica. “It’s about the individual’s state of being at the moment, and how the body is inundated with these emotions, which might be contrasting but are all happening at the same time.”
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To translate said flood and flux of feeling into something tangible, Pica focused on color: muted mauves and rosebud pinks merging with burgundies and beiges, and even a touch of gold, all endeavoring to embody the rapture, hope, and hesitancy that comes with a blossoming relationship. The State of Emotions Eyeshadow Palette houses all of the aforementioned hues, offering accentuation via a brown-meets-burgundy Kajal Pencil in Ambivalent and the Mixed Emotions Mascara of a similar shade. Lipsticks must be selected depending on mood, with Transported, a berried red, communicating a much surer sentiment than the nude neutrality demonstrated by On the Fence.
The collection feels intimately of the moment: TikTok is flooded with makeup trends based on physical states and ephemeral emotions, a want of playful beauty transmuting to an opportunity to enhance those human moments rather than obscure them. “I love an intense emotion showing on the face through the use of makeup,” says Pica. “Bitten lips, flushed cheeks, things that happen really in your life. How the skin produces the texture of the tear, the blush in your cheeks, it’s all very sensual, all very alive.”
In that sensuous spirit (and in honor of the culmination of cuffing season) Pica’s tips for a swoon-worthy Valentine’s Day makeup look are all about the kind of hands-on application they won’t be able to take their eyes off of.
For an unabashedly romantic look, ditch the brushes. Pica urges fans to apply the collection (and V-Day makeup in general) with their fingertips, layering, smudging, and generally coloring outside of the lines. “There’s something about feeling the makeup that I’m interested in,” she says. “I want people to experience it.”
While Valentine’s Day makeup tends to center on the lips—the better for kissing, or thinking about kissing—Pica suggests celebrating with an enhanced gaze. “Maybe you’ll be on a date, so there’s a lot of talking and playing with eyes,” she says, recommending ample eyeliner to define and deepen, finished with a generous pull of mascara.
Should you opt for eyeshadow, Pica recommends keeping things soft and blurry, the better to mimic the dreaminess that you’re feeling. “You can sort of translate these emotions, almost as if they were coming out of your eyes,” she says. (Heart-eyed emoji, anyone?)
Whether you favor neutrals, petal pinks, or deep reds, a final, well-placed touch of warm metallic will help keep things celebratory—and optimistic. “A gold accent provides some brightness and glow, like when you’re in love, and you feel like you can do anything,” says Pica. So add a feathering of gold to lids, or let a gilded highlight offer extra radiance.
