5 minutes with Erin Wasson: Maybelline’s It girl chats about beauty essentials and filming TV shows with Pharrell

Date November 4, 2013

For Target’s holiday runway show at World MasterCard Fashion Week, the mega retailer pulled out all the stops—including a supermodel surprise. Perennial style icon Erin Wasson opened and closed the show, making it one of the week’s top tweetable moments. Between modeling gigs, relaunching her jewellery line, Low Luv, and mentoring wannabe fashion designers on the new reality TV show Styled To Rock (fellow judges include Rihanna, Pharrell and stylist Mel Ottenberg), Wasson has long reigned as a Maybelline New York It girl, serving for more than a decade as one of the beauty brand’s top faces. To find out how this multitasking muse does it all, we sat down with Wasson before she hit the Target runway.

How do you feel about being called Alexander Wang’s muse?
“It’s an honour. But I think the word “muse” is very relative. I don’t really know if people actually know what a muse is anymore. Who I am as a person and what I represent is very close to that girl that Alex is designing for—you know, the girl that isn’t afraid to be the least dressed up at a fancy cocktail party. So if I represent that for him, then dope!”

Fashion month just ended, are there any spring trends that you’re excited about?
“I haven’t looked at one show. I don’t want to look. I don’t like to be affected. I’m at a place in my life where I know what I like and I know how I like to dress so if I stumble upon something really cool, that’s great but I’m not going to go look for what I should be coveting. I know exactly who I am. I know how I want to represent myself and I’m not willing to like, abort my character at this point.”

Do you have a similar approach to makeup?
“Totally, I’m really basic. I’ll do a smudgy eye, mascara and lip balm. Even lipstick is too high maintenance for me. I mean, I love the way a red lip looks on other girls but I’ve tried it and I’d be in the bathroom every five seconds reapplying. And then nobody wants to kiss you because you’ve got this red lip! There are just too many obstacles.”

Is there a beauty product you love that you’re constantly buying more of?
“I go through these Maybelline Baby Lips like crazy. I have one in every one of my bags. It’s like my little crack stick. Also, I’m freakishly weirded out that the perfume I wear is one day going to be discontinued so every time I go to the airport I’m like two boxes at a time, hoarding shit at the duty free. It’s called Guerlain Imperial. I know—it sounds like such an old lady smell and I would never have thought in a million years, but it’s like I finally found my smell. I feel like this perfume completely encapsulates me. It’s become so symbiotic with myself. I’m deathly afraid it’s going to be discontinued. Who knows, maybe I’m the one person buying it but I’m so worried!”

What was it like shooting Styled To Rock?
“It was awesome. I was on this panel of insanely amazing people. Pharrell is one of the most intelligent human beings I’ve ever met in my life and to hear his perspective on things was like listening to a prophet. I was like, “you need to have a church. I would go to church on Sundays if you were the preacher.” The whole time I felt like, “how the F did I end up on this power board of people?”

I know music is a big part of the show and a big inspiration for you—do you have any musical aspirations yourself?
“I don’t play but so many of my friends are musicians so sometimes I’ll jump into a jam. But put it this way, my album is not going to be dropping any time soon. That’s definitely not going to be on my resume! But I love music. It’s everything. I think that it’s a part of every single solitary moment of our lives. It’s our friend when no one is around, it’s our comfort when we’re having a shit day, it’s empowering, it’s comforting, it’s all encompassing. I’d be dead if it wasn’t for music. So to be a part of a show where music and fashion was combined…it just personified me even further.”