ALLURE: Oh my God, I love it. It reminds me of when you’re a kid and your mom puts all the Vaseline on you before you go to school — enough for the entire day. Now, I’m wondering what are some of the other products you love to use when you’ve got a show.
SYMONE: For foundation, I actually use the Juvia’s Place foundation because I love how full coverage it is. It’s thick, but it spreads easily. I’ll combine it with the Nars Radiant Longwear Foundation. The Juvia’s Place is drier, so I’ll mix the luminous with it to bring the glow, if you will, back into my skin. And then I love a highlighter, darling. I love to be high lit. So, I use Anastasia’s Sun Dipped Glow Kit to bring all that shine out. Just like I said, I want to radiate inside and out.
ALLURE: Who are some of the style icons that inspire you?
SYMONE: Rihanna is my girl. She’s my number one.
ALLURE: Didn’t she slide into your DMs recently?
SYMONE: She did. We were actually shooting [an Instagram Reel] for the beads look in the desert before the sun was up. I’m on Instagram in the car and right before we get out to go do our little hike to get there, she DMs me.
I said, “Y’all, y’all, y’all. Rihanna just slid into my DMs, y’all. This is not a joke. This is not a drill, okay?” When I first looked at it I thought, “@Badgalriri? Okay, whatever,” because you never know. Sometimes there’s one tricky little extra I at the end or G in the name somewhere. And then I saw the checkmark and knew it was the real deal. The message she sent me was very sweet. You could not ask for more from someone that you look up to and admire inside and out.
What she’s done with her career and what she’s done in fashion, makeup, and music is something you aspire to when you want to be a mogul. Her style, it’s effortless, it’s edgy, it makes you think, it’s fearless. It’s all of the things that I want Symone to look like. I also love Grace Jones. The androgyny, the fearlessness in her style. Lil’ Kim, too. I love her sexiness, her unapologeticness… is that a word?
ALLURE: It is today.
SYMONE: Put it in Webster’s! All of the fearlessness of all those women, I put in my little box. And then when I want to get real glamorous, I’ll put Diana Ross in there. All of those people put together make up who Symone is.
ALLURE: And it’s clear looking at your drag.
SYMONE: You get it, which I love because that was the whole point. I want to shed light on all this beauty and this grace because it’s been done before me, and many a queen has paved the way for me to have this moment.
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