AS A QUALITY, beauty has never been easy to define. Clearly, there’s more to it than flawless appearance. Sometimes an engaging quirk of character or personality is the very thing that nourishes the soul. Beauty might be discovered in a feeling, a journey or even the realisation of a cherished dream. Most intriguingly, beauty is totally subjective. Everyone has different triggers and unique experiences to inform what pleases their own eye and warms the heart.
In our Beauty issue, this nebulous concept abounds not only in people or physical objects, but also in stories and experiences, such as the one about the journeywoman actress who finally discovers the role she was destined to play — and totally owns it.
When Leslie Bibb was cast in season three of “The White Lotus” as one of the pivotal characters, Kate Bohr, she brought her own unique spin — not to mention a truly iconic haircut — to the role.
“To have people really appreciate my work? That doesn’t happen all the time for me,” Bibb tells Victoria Pearson when they meet at Sydney’s Park Hyatt hotel to talk for our cover story, on page 64. “So I’m like a sponge right now. I’m like, thank you, thank you, thank you. People I admire coming up and saying kind things? Yeah, it makes me want to cry.”
The actress Leslie Bibb wears a Ralph Lauren blazer, pants and shoes, ralphlauren.com.au; and Cartier watch, cartier.com.au. Makeup: Armani Beauty, giorgioarmanibeauty. com.au.
Adds the director Mike White, the man who spotted her star quality: “I know what it’s like to be out in the ocean for a long time and you finally get a wave.”
There’s an inextricable link between beauty and art, but it turns out that it’s a short hop from there to the world of scent via Leonardo da Vinci, the enigmatic genius who had a little-known penchant for perfume, writes Viola Raikhel on page 42. Would we say the same of architecture? As the French designers Agathe Labaye and Florian Sumi explain on page 58, this more technical discipline can also reach a higher plane when it’s infused with inspiration and passion.
Yet what we appreciate as beauty may not always be entirely truthful. Does it matter? On page 24, columnist Lance Richardson casts a bemused eye over the new social media-driven fascination with male beauty regimens, which may now rival and even exceed women’s in complexity and expense.
Going a step further, Divya Venkataraman looks deep into society’s pursuit of an idealised form of beauty, via cosmetic enhancement, on page 30. In an era when AI-enhanced perfection stares back at us from our feeds, “there is definitely a gap between our beliefs and our behaviour”, the beauty critic Jessica DeFino tells us. “What we’re seeing in the cultural feedback is that people love a natural look. What we’re seeing in the data is that no one is really pulling back [on interventions]. Those two things just don’t align.”
It’s a dichotomy and debate that presents itself in many ways throughout this edition. Go ahead and take a look — we think it’s a beauty.
– Katarina Kroslakova
Publisher, Editor in Chief
