Delfina Delettrez, Jewelry Designer

Delfina Delettrez
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Delfina Delettrez

'I always do my hair by myself, usually without even looking in the mirror. I have no idea how I do the braids! I cut my hair alone, I do my hair by myself, so really everything I do is house-made, handmade, like my jewelry. Sometimes it actually works, and sometimes not, and I need a friend to tell me the mess I have behind my head. But usually I like messy hair; I like a very natural style. The only time I go to hairdressers is when I have a shoot.

My makeup style depends not on the collection I’m designing, but more on what pieces I’m wearing. So if, I don’t know, for example I wear a bracelet with pop colors, I go with some pop colors on my face, or maybe I paint each nail with a different acid color. Or when I wear [pieces from] my collection that has a Victorian style, I just go with white skin, put some powder on, and my eyes have to be, like, dark, dark, dark.

I started using kohl around my eyes because I was very, very lazy when I was fourteen, fifteen...when I started to take care of myself, you know? And since I was very lazy, I wasn’t taking off my makeup. [Laughs] I realized how cool it was, the day after. Now I always try to make the day-after look by having a kind of dirty, very black shadow under my eyes. I just use a black eye pencil, or sometimes a very light brown, because I think with my eyes, it works—my eyes change color with the sunlight; they can be brown, and then they can turn to a yellowish-green, so I like the contrast with the brown pencil. I love the pencils from Nars, in the most black you can find, because they are very thick and you can add shadow by just blending it with your finger. It’s very rare for me to use makeup on top of my eyes. But now I’m into the orange colors, so all of the orange eye shadows, I like. I don’t use foundation or anything, though, because I am very claustrophobic on my skin.

I love to wear very, very long eyelashes, not by using fake ones, but by using very intense, even waterproof mascara. I love this Bobbi Brown mascara called Extreme Party—the name tells you everything. [Laughs] When I don’t use makeup on my eyes, sometimes I color my lips. I just discovered a Chanel Rouge Coco Shine lipstick in the color Flirt. It’s a kind of orange and I really like it now, with my tan skin. But otherwise, in the winter, I like Rouge Coco Shine in Rebelle, but my skin has to be very white, with just a little bit of mascara, and then this lipstick.

For skincare every day, I like the Sisley cream All Day All Year. It’s for every kind of skin. Then, I use the Eye Contour Mask from Sisley—they have a good botanical face scrub, too. It’s very, very refreshing; it kind of makes your face freeze. I love to use it in the summertime. And I’ve always loved Acqua di Gigli from Santa Maria Novella. Santa Maria Novella is a very, very old pharmacy in Florence, which is in Rome now, too, where all the nuns in the monastery make the products and then they sell them to the pharmacy. So, they’re natural, and the packagings are incredible; I am always influenced by the packaging, a lot. But this water is refreshing and it calms your skin.

On my hair, I just tested a caviar shampoo from Alterna. It was a present, and I’m enjoying it a lot. It doesn’t smell like caviar, otherwise I would never use it because I hate caviar. [Laughs] After shampoo, I use Rodin by Recine hair oil. I never do conditioner. In summertime, I also like the oil of Semi di Lino, which is very natural—I even use it on my daughter. It doesn’t intoxicate your hair, and it makes it smoother. And I love hairspray—I’m obsessed with hairspray—I like the Neil George one. Usually hairsprays are all sticky and they stink, but this one is lemon and orange, and light—it’s incredible. Because I do my hair by myself, I just hairspray myself for two minutes and it stays. I cannot live without a hairspray, I have to say. It’s one of my biggest obsessions. I don’t know why—you know when you have an obsession, you don’t really know why, it’s just an obsession? Anyway, I always have a little hairspray in my purse.”

—as told to ITG

Delfina Delettrez photographed by Emily Weiss at her fall presentation at Les Arts Décoratifs in Paris, France on March 1st, 2012.