When I found out that I would be interviewing Ciara, I polled the Allure staff for questions they thought I should ask. One of the most popular suggestions? Details on her skin-care routine. This should come as little surprise since, after all, we are super obsessed with skin care, and Ciara’s skin consistently looks flawless. When I finally sat down with the 32-year-old songstress at the launch of Pandora’s new Shine Collection (for which she is a brand ambassador), I was shocked, shocked I tell you, to find out that her routine is crazy simple — and possibly a little problematic, at least in her dermatologist’s opinion.
“It’s really bad, but I wash my face with my body soap,” she tells Allure. “I was telling a dermatologist that, and they thought I was crazy. They were looking at me like I had four eyes or something.” Her body wash of choice, however, comes from Dove, which is typically super moisturizing, though she admits that she’s not sure if it’s necessarily great for her gorgeous mug. “Whatever I wash my body with, I will use for my face. I don’t know if that’s the smartest thing,” she says with a laugh. I laugh too, but am actually weeping inside because my skin-care routine is far higher maintenance, with acids and chemical exfoliants galore, and let’s just say my skin doesn’t look as radiant all the time as Ciara’s does. Ah, well, such is life, I suppose, for the unglamorous lot.
But as our conversation continued, I realized that multitasking with her beauty products is just how Ciara operates. And, it turns out, she uses a lot of stuff you can find at your local drugstore. The singer is a huge fan of Cetaphil and Aquaphor Healing Ointment, which she uses for absolutely everything. “It’s actually kind of three-in-one for me, ’cause it’s really for my babies, but I use it as well.” And Ciara, who is also brand ambassador for Revlon, swears by the brand’s Ultra HD Lip Color in Seduction and pencils in her brows with ColorStay Brow Pencil.
I couldn’t get over the fact that for a celebrity her beauty routine seemed so… normal. Ciara has some of the exact same things in her beauty stash as my mom, my auntie, my BFF, some acquaintance-I’m-cordial-to-but-don’t-really-fuck-with. But then again, I shouldn’t have been surprised. Sure, Ciara is an international superstar with an athlete hubby and two very cute little ones who, if they had Instagram accounts, would have way more followers than I do. But in spite of the built-in fabulousness of her life, if you look at her videos on Instagram, many of which feature her family, they seem pretty goofy, adorable, and relatable. And I was pleased to find that in person, Ciara is just as charming and down to earth.
Read on to find out more about Ciara’s amazingly relatable beauty habits and mistakes, what she’s teaching her children about beauty, and the one beauty product she and hubby Russell Wilson share.
ALLURE: What’s the favorite haircut you’ve ever had?
CIARA: [I’ve had] a bob length before. I’ve played before with a hairpiece and had my hair really short like a boy cut, and [that was] also really fun, too.
ALLURE: Yeah, and you have the face shape for it. Now, let’s talk about some of your not-so-shining moments in beauty. Ever made a mistake that makes you cringe when you look back on it?
C: There are moments when my eyelashes are too long.
ALLURE: Ah, the Snuffleupagus lashes.
C: Me and my makeup artist [Yolonda Frederick], we die laughing. They’re like spiders — spider legs. We’re like, “What were we thinking? Why are these lashes way up to my eyebrows?”
ALLURE: We’ve all been there. Now, on to beauty products. Do you share or steal any from Russell?
C: You know what? We both love Kiehl’s lotion, and one of our bottles [winds up] missing at times. I take his Kiehl’s bottle from his countertop, and it ends up on mine. Then he’s like, “Where’d that go?” And he goes back and gets it. We have things that we share, and that is one of them.
ALLURE: What’s your worst habit when it comes to beauty?
C: You know it’s so funny, I have another really bad thing that I do. If my makeup artist beats my face really good, and she’s not gonna be in town the next day, I sleep with my makeup on so I can still have a good look for the next day.
YOLONDA FREDERICK (CIARA’S MAKEUP ARTIST) CHIMES IN: I call her the next day and be like, “Who did your makeup?”
C: I’m like, “You did that girl! You did that!” I sleep like this, right here. (Demonstrates a very rigid sleeping position.)
ALLURE: You sleep like King Tut.
C: Exactly, I’m not turning on the pillows, I’m not messing the pillows up. I’ll be like, “I’m gonna reserve this beat face for the next day, ’cause I got a meeting coming up in the morning.”
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ALLURE: The beauty nerd in me is horrified, but I can’t act like I haven’t done that myself. Moving on, let’s talk about your little ones. You’ve got a little bitty girl, and we’re living in a world that’s hard for girls, especially black girls. What do you want to teach your daughter about beauty and being beautiful?
C: It think it’s really important for her to know that beauty comes from within, and it’s really all about your character that will make you essentially, that will shape you. You wanna stand for something, and she is a beautiful girl to me, and I’d like to believe that she’s gonna grow up very beautiful. And I would hope that she would understand the importance of really having a voice and that it’s not about what’s on the exterior; it’s all about the interior. That will make whatever’s on the outside shine brighter. I definitely don’t want for her to think that looks are the way that you get into things. You wanna be the girl that has brains, the girl that has something to talk about, and the girl with soul, with character, heart, passion, that really wants to do great things in this world.
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ALLURE: What are you teaching your son about beauty?
C: You know what? I would hope that when he meets a young lady (and I mean lady when he’s 18 years old, both of them), I would hope that he meets a woman that’s full of all those things that I want my daughter to be. A woman of character. I would hope that he wouldn’t want to be with a woman just because she looks hot. She needs to have something more to her. I hope that’s how he would look when he’s looking at the woman that he can spend the rest of his life with. I hope that he’s also looking for that kind of woman and not some other kind of woman that’s temporary. I hope that he will have great vision and really understand what beauty means when looking at a woman. [I want him to] also respect her beauty, treat her like a queen, and understand the importance in that, too.
