“I think that I try to be as organic as possible. When I was pregnant with my first baby, I found out about a lot of the stuff that is in cosmetics and it kind of grossed me out. A lot of fragrances and parabens and hormone disrupters—they’re not great for growing babies in utero. But then, I feel like with everything in my life it’s 95% good intentions and then that other 5%...I bleach my hair! You know what I mean? [Laughs] It’s like, I eat organic all the time but if I’m in Coney Island I eat hot dogs. So I don’t want to say I’m totally holistic.

I used to have a lot of acne and really wasn’t happy with my skin. But it got better after my second kid, I think because I started eating much more mindfully—eating much more organic food and local food. But I also think that maybe hormonally I’m older and somehow that balanced out my body. I used to use all of Pat Wexler’s products for problem skin and they were amazing, but now I don’t really need to. I switched to all this organic stuff and it works just the same. My routine isn’t complicated—I just use Weleda Wild Rose Cleansing Lotion and then Rodin Olio Lusso, that’s it. I talked to Rose-Marie Swift—the makeup artist—and she recommended Weleda because it’s really pure. I also use this mask, Ren Glycol Lactic Radiance Renewal Mask, which is the greatest thing ever. I bought it at Whole Foods one day. I have all their masks now, but I’m obsessed with that one. I think it changed my skin too, honestly. If I have a zit, I put this on it, from the health food store: the Desert Essence Blemish Touch Stick. It’s amazing! It stings and smells horrible, but if you pick your face and then put that on, it doesn’t turn into zits! I’ve also used Dr. Hauschka Rose Body Oil for a really long time because it smells so good. I put that on after I shower, while my skin is wet because otherwise it’s hard to rub in. I do it even in the summer. I use California Baby on my kids. It’s natural and it smells really good. They have a Calendula body cream that soothes rashes, scrapes, cuts—everything. There is Jurlique Baby, which is amazing! But after a while I was like, ‘it’s organic, I should get this, but $40 for baby wash? No.’ At first you’re so excited but then you go through one bottle a month and you’re like, ‘ I need the $40 wash, my kid doesn’t.’ [Laughs]

My friend Jeanine Lobell told me about the Clarisonic. It’s like, $120. This is part of my 95% holistic and 5% big guns! [Laughs] I use it about once a day. You put the cleanser on it; I actually take it in the shower usually. It has a timer on it—first you do your forehead, then it beeps, then you do your nose and chin, then you do one cheek and then it beeps, and then you do the other cheek. Your skin is really smooth afterwards. You know little clogged pores? Gone! ‘Cause it rattles them out! [Laughs] Jeanine told me not to use it so much, use it every other day. I feel like it’s a little bit like Retin-A or something, without being chemical. It’s stimulating collagen and all that stuff that those creams do because of the abrasion.

When I was a teenager I wore tons and tons of makeup—you know, revolting contour and stuff in the late 1980s early 1990s—like, a sunset eye shadow. But then I didn’t really wear makeup until recently. I had my makeup done for a photo shoot about a year ago, Christian McCulloch did it, and I made him write down everything he used, and then I went and bought it. And now, if I want to look nice, I use all that makeup. I feel like I look a little weird if I don’t have black eyeliner on. So that is the one thing, before I knew how to do makeup, I would put black eyeliner on the inside and wear sunscreen. Then I added things from the Christian McCulloch list: MAC Face and Body foundation with that little pink sponge, the Beauty Blender; MAC Lilicent cream blush. He told me to use this brush [MAC Duo Fibre Face Brush] to put on the cream blush. This is the eyelash curler—or as my son calls it, ‘mommy scissors’—and mascara that Jeanine told me to use. It’s Kevyn Aucoin. It’s amazing. I used to think it was all about cheap mascara, but that’s better, because it doesn’t come off—like, when you get it wet, it doesn’t come off as a black stain, it comes off in tubes. I wear mascara everyday. Not if I’m not doing anything, but if I’m going to go to work and see people that I have to look professional in front of, I wear all this makeup.

I know how to do a smoky eye—again because a makeup artist taught me. Brigitte Reiss-Anderson taught me how to do it in the Palm Springs airport. When I go out at night, a smoky eye is really fast for me. All I need is eyeliner. I color really really hard on the inner upper lashline so that it actually does the outside too—sometimes I do a little bit on the lid—and I make it into a nice shape. And I take a Q-tip to the corners. Or I do a red lip, because that’s even faster. I use different red lipsticks. I have one from Chanel, Rouge Coco Gabrielle, that’s a good one. And I use that one from MAC that Madonna used, Ruby Woo. I like Schiap by NARS, that’s pink. And there’s a NARS crayon that I like, Red Square. It comes with its own sharpener.

Before I went platinum, it was kind of streaky ‘uptown’ blonde and dyed black underneath. Then eight or nine years ago, I cut off all my hair with a friend when I was traveling for a shoot—we decided I would look really cute with really short hair—[the hairstylist] Ward, who I was working with at the time, gave me a Mohawk-bob, basically. It was like a bob, but when you lifted it up, it was all shaved. Because I have so much hair, he was like, ‘it will look thin and stringy and awesome!’ And I was like, ‘Ok.’ It looked cool when he did it, and then the next day I looked like somebody’s mom with a short highlighted blond bob. The grow out wasn’t cute—growing out shave, even to get it to your chin, is like, six months. I took Viviscal. At the time, I was still working at Vogue a lot, and Carmen Kass’ hair was falling out because she dyed her hair like six times in one year, so she took Viviscal and told me about it and it made my hair grow faster. Anyway the cut felt so wrong, so I dyed it white, and I’ve never gone back. It changes everything too: having white hair makes my super pale skin look tan, which I kind of like. It kind of makes me look better in pictures too, definitely. It’s like having back-lighting all the time. [Laughs]

I’ve been going to Orlo salon for a long time; I think I was, like, their third client. I get single process color every six weeks. They just put bleach on the roots, and I sit there for two hours. It takes forever. There’s no toner, there’s no anything. It hurts my scalp, for two hours. [Laughs] But I sit there and gossip with George, Orlando [Pita’s] boyfriend; he runs the place. He’s awesome. And Joey cuts it when they make fun of me for having it too long. I like it to look raggedy on the bottom, and he makes it so it just looks raggedy but isn’t actually. My husband likes it when I have bangs, so I cut bangs once a year. Orlando cut them last year when I had the baby because he was like, ‘You need to get your husband to like you again now that you’re not pregnant. I’ll cut them.’ Yeah, they all know that my husband likes the bangs—I don’t like them, but when I have them, he like, loves me. [laughs] It’s true! Everybody at Orlando’s salon knows about it, and all my friends! I always cut them after I have a baby because I feel like, this doesn’t look so hot [gestures toward body] so I better make this look hot [gestures toward face] for him. [Laughs]”

—as told to ITG