“I love decorating places, just creating scenes. In my parents’ house, they used to have mirrors all around the bathroom, and I thought that was quite nice. My dad is from Madagasgar, and my mom is Italian, and I live in between here [Paris] and London. I’m a student in London, studying photography at Sotheby’s, and here I’m looking for an internship. I’d like to work for a gallery.

I like beauty that’s very cinematographic; I like it all being very static. I feel very strongly about Marlene Dietrich. If there was someone I look up to in terms of beauty aesthetics, it would have to be her. For example, right now I’m really into arched eyebrows. I’m quite an obsessive person, and this is my latest obsession. Before it used to be colored contact lenses. I like having options. I’m not a very loyal customer; I’m not very disciplined in that way. As a child, I used to always draw my upper lip a lot bigger than my lower lip, sort of like Sophia Loren. So I always had things like that, sort of like you want to emulate someone or something about someone, and then you always try to make that married with who you are. They’re aspirational characters, I guess.

For makeup, it’s just the MAC Face and Body—that’s what I put as a primer—in a shade lighter than my skin, and then I put on the Studio Fix NC15 foundation. My eyeliner is MAC Cruella, which is purple. I used to wear it when my hair was red, and I think it’s quite nice. At first I thought it would be quite off-putting, but it works. I like the MAC Brow Set in clear for my eyelashes because it keeps them very static. I don’t wear mascara; I find it hard. I like the eyelashes to be very defined so you can see them one by one, and I think it’s hard to find a mascara that gives them that effect. I like a matte face, matte lipstick; I like it so the face looks very one-dimensional, which is the opposite of what everyone wants. I like it looking very rigid. My lipstick is Shiseido Perfect Rouge in RD514 and RD305, or Kanebo Sensai 01 and 09. I like them quite reddish brown. I used to like the Lancôme liquid eyeliner because I thought the brush was really good and very thick. I’d do a cat eye with a very thick liquid liner. But that’s it, pretty much.

I read about Egyptian Magic on the internet, and then I couldn’t find anywhere to buy it, and they had it at this shop called Astier de Villatte. I really like that shop. I got my cutlery there, I got all my ceramics there, and they had it there, and I thought this was a coincidence. But somehow things always happen that way. If you’re looking for something, it will turn up one way or another… and that’s how I discovered it. I use it on my face. I have very dry skin and it works very well. But mostly my creams come from Bioderma because I think they have really good products. I have two creams from them: Crealine Riche and Sébium AKN. And I think Avène Cicalfate is good when the skin is irritated. I like mists also, like Caudalie, the Beauty Elixir—that’s really nice; I think it adds a sort of freshness to the face during the day. And I like it because it’s slightly scented, but not too much. I have a sort of fascination with fragrance. I like wearing perfume, but I feel quite funny about it as well. I like perfumes by Caron. They have this really nice one called Tabac Blond that smells of tobacco. And Creed has a really nice one called Royal English Leather. I love that because it sort of reminds me of car interiors—the smell of leather—like when I was a kid and I was driving around in my dad’s car. I really like the idea of that. Pino Sylvestre shower gel has a great scent; you know Old Spice? It’s something similar, but Italian.

When I was looking for a hairdresser in Paris, my friend recommended [David Mallett] to me. Initially I had copper hair when I went, and I wanted Givenchy red. My grandma would tell me things she would do when she was young, during the war, with the lipstick they’d wear, and how there was only one shade of hair color available because all the other ones were sold out, and they’d all have the same color where she lived in Northern Italy. I really like that, the idea of having a population of all the women with the same colored hair, sort of reddish. I like using Splend’or Lacca Italian hairspray if you want to look very rigid and severe; I like using it when you have your hair up. And if you have your hair up and then spray Bumble and bumble powder all over it, it looks quite nice. I like everything being not natural—there’s no reason. My friends were like, ‘Let’s go out this evening and we’ll have a wig night,’ but I’d rather just get my hair done at David Mallett and not have to wear a wig.”

—as told to ITG