Decades ago, long before her viral singles were written, her Juno Awards were won, and her brand partnerships were inked, Charlotte Cardin sat watching her grandmother at her vanity. “I remember looking at her, doing her nails and her makeup,” the Montreal-born singer muses. “I always really looked up to her.” As a former aesthetician, her grandmother’s at- home beauty rituals were detailed and satisfying—but that’s not what stood out to her.
Instead, Cardin admired her grandmother for “having those steps and taking time for herself—no one else,” she says. “It [wasn’t] to have people look at her a certain way. It [was] just so she’d feel good about herself. I’ve always loved that approach to beauty.” Cardin’s own beauty philosophy follows suit today. “I never wear a lot of makeup, but I like taking the time and going through these steps that just make it feel like a routine and a moment I take that’s only mine,” she explains. For her pre-show prep and her everyday routine, hair and makeup is minimal but critical.
Cardin phones in on the eve of Le Défilé, L’Oréal Paris’s annual show at Paris Fashion Week. Twenty-four hours after our call, she took to the catwalk to perform “Feel Good,” the sensual, bouncy ode to pleasure off her 2023 EP Une semaine à Paris.
In July, she was named L’Oréal Paris’s newest brand ambassador, joining the likes of Viola Davis, Cindy Bruna, and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, who all walked in this year’s show. “If you look at [L’Oréal Paris’s] ambassadors… you have women from everywhere,” she says. “I just love that L’Oréal Paris tells the stories of women who are different and come from different places.
They’re all beautiful in such unique, complex ways.”
As she’s evolved from a contestant on The Voice’s Québécois spinoff, La Voix, into one of Canada’s most decorated pop stars (she’s got more than a dozen Juno nominations under her belt and was honoured as Billboard Canada’s Woman of the Year last year), her look has consistently been understated and effortless.
Her approach, she says, has always been less is more. “I kind of used makeup to enhance things that I like about myself,” she says. “I just feel like it’s so nice to take the time and have a ritual before [getting on the] stage or getting ready in the morning.”
When it comes to makeup, she sticks to the essentials. “I have those few really good products that I always use,” she says. The most treasured must-haves in her makeup bag are as you’d expect: blush and lip gloss. “[They’re] my go-tos.”
When she wakes up, blush is a must, she says. “I can look really tired in the morning and a little bit pale. A bit of blush makes [me] feel more glowy.” Her gloss of choice is the L’Oréal Paris Plump Ambition Hyaluron Lip Oil. “It’s so nice because it has this tingling feeling. It makes your lips a little bit plumper and juicier.”
True to form, she sticks to the clear shade for a sleek, natural look. “I could be wearing nothing but the lip gloss and feel like a better version of myself,” she says.
For Cardin, it’s more about the feeling. “We don’t have that much time in a day to do things that only belong to us,” she says. “A nice little beauty routine is a few minutes that you take just for yourself.”
Feature image courtesy of L’Oréal Paris.
