Tavi Gevinson, Clinique's New Face, Talks Acne and Looking Like Taylor Swift in Her "Blank Space" Music Video
By Cheryl Wishchhover
At 19, Tavi Gevinson has already had more titles and accolades than most people do by the time they retire. Fashion blogger. Editor in chief. Actress. TED Talk-er. She can now add “Clinique ambassador” to her multi-page resumé.
Clinique has tapped Gevinson, as well as as Hannah Bronfman and Margaret Zhang, as ambassadors for a new campaign targeting that most desirable of demographics, the millennials. Clinique is hoping to encourage a new generation to try the now-iconic three-step cleansing system by engaging with young women via its new campaign, called #FaceForward, with a call out to them to look towards the future. (You can watch a clip from the campaign at the bottom of this post.)
I sat down with Gevinson in a hotel room in NYC a few weeks ago, and in person she is as warm, funny, frank and intelligent as you would expect. She was perfectly made up, with the exception of some old chipped and peeling nail polish, which just made her that much more charming. We talked about her experience with Clinique, her thoughts about aging, the future of Rookie and that time Julia Louis-Dreyfus gave her some anti-aging advice.
Fashionista: What’s your personal history with Clinique? Did your mom use the products?
Tavi Gevinson: My mom is a human who wakes up at 4:30 am and weaves tapestries. She would not ever use products of any kind, but when I was in high school I was once on a photo shoot where the makeup artist sent me home with the yellow [Dramatically Different Moisturizing] lotion and I started using it everyday. As I got more into doing a skin care routine, I started using the three-step program which actually sounds like an addiction recovery thing so…[laughs]
Before the campaign when I had moved here and was doing the play “This Is Our Youth,” I had to do my own makeup for it. It wasn’t stage makeup. They just wanted me to be a 19-year-old girl. I would kind of cake on the Chubby Stick and a lot of pink lip gloss on top and then I also did really chunky mascara. Then Clinique asked me to do the campaign and it felt really natural for me. [Ed. note: Gevinson Instagrammed a picture of said Chubby Stick right around the time Clinique was considering approaching her for the campaign, according to brand reps. They took that as a good sign she would say yes to the project.]
Related: Cindy Crawford’s Son and Daughter Nab a Spread in ‘CR Fashion Book’
CW: That play was set in the ‘80s. Was the '80s makeup hard?
TG: I remember our costume designer showing me a photo of Debbie Harry as a reference, but our playwright was like, “I don’t want it to feel like a play about the '80s,” so I didn’t get to get that creative, but I did have to tease my hair. It was always a deflated heap [by the end]. For the second act I had to wet it down like I had just taken a shower. And it was bad, every night.
CW: At Rookie, you speak to young women your age. What’s your sense of what their skin care concerns are?
TG: I get the sense that some just want to take care of acne and look natural and feel comfortable, and we also have a lot of readers who get a lot more creative and really respond to the DIYs we have that are like, “Put flower petals around your eyes!” There’s a bit of both. But I think that it’s pretty universal that acne is bad. I go in phases with how experimental I get with makeup, but no matter what, I just want my skin to be good.
CW: Have you had issues with acne?
TG: Yes, I break out when I’m stressed, but now having a routine prevents that. Now I can suppress it more.
CW: When you have to wear heavy makeup for a shoot or a movie, how d0 you deal with it?
Related: Two Popular Beauty Bloggers Wrote a Book About Korean Beauty
TG: I just made sure I got it all off at the end of the night. I used to be really lazy about it and that’s why I would break out. Now it’s like not brushing my teeth or not taking out my contacts. I feel like I’m going to sleep in a mask or something. That is one thing my mom was very adamant about — face washing. And I didn’t realize that it was important for eyelashes too. I was like, 'It’s not my skin,’ and my friend was like, 'You could get an eye infection.’ So for a few minutes every night I look like Taylor Swift in the “Blank Space” video.