Pinch me now—in my local Sephora, and probably yours, are ginormous displays of yours truly looking, well, unlike I've ever looked before, and, most likely, how I'll never look again.

One morning back in July, a group of some of the most gorgeous girls I know (Leelee Sobieski, Julia Sarr-Jamois, Langley Fox Hemingway, and more) gathered at Pier 59 to be made over and shot by David Sims (!!!) for Sephora's holiday campaign. And when I looked at the call sheet the night before, if I hadn't already fallen off my chair from seeing the list of girls, I did when I saw two names: Guido and Diane Kendal. The glam squad that I nervously approach for interviews backstage at shows like Alexander Wang, Louis Vuitton, and Prada were going to be doing hair and makeup on me.

For the shoot, Kendal worked her well-documented face-sculpting magic, painted on some seriously boyish brows, lacquered up my lips, and sent me over to Palau, who sort of paused for a second and said, “Let's just do it on the set.” So as I sat on a stool in front of one of my favorite photographers in the world, Guido's assistants passed him bottles of products and no fewer than five instruments, like doctors in an E.R. “Scalpel.”) while he twisted and twirled pieces of my hair out from under a hat. Snap! Snap! Snap! and ten minutes later, I walked away. Did that even just happen? It did, I was reminded, by standing in front of a kiosk in the SoHo Sephora, snapping pics of myself (and texting Langley hers) to send to my parents, in what was probably my most meta moment to date. And now, I'll go back to being the beauty reporter. But it was pretty friggin' awesome, and I just had to share.

—Emily Weiss