The Best Beauty Buys from the Zara Beauty Make-up Collection

Zara heard our cries and moved into the make-up market with its first fully comprehensive beauty collection in 2021. ‘It’s a complete collection for eyes, lips, face and nails, and it’s made with the highest-performing ingredients, with cruelty-free, clean formulas and refillable packaging,’ explains Diane Kendal, legendary make-up artist and the creative director of Zara Beauty.

Aside from the environmentally- conscious credentials and pleasingly affordable price points, Diane says the biggest appeal of the Zara Beauty collection was the way it embraces diversity.

And what better time to launch a mood-boosting make-up range, when (after a year of skincare stealing the show) we were finally rediscovering the wonders of our make-up bags, dusting off our brushes and heading back out into the big, bright world wearing our game-faces once more.

‘Beauty is self-expression. And within the Zara Beauty line people will be able to have that self-expression, they will be able to find that perfect lip colour, their perfect shadow palette – they’ll be able to experiment,’ says Diane. ‘Coming out of the pandemic, people will want to celebrate things – life, doing things that make us feel joyful – and make-up can play into that.’

Available in-store at Zara’s London flagship (333 Oxford Street) or online with the help of a hi-tech virtual service that allows you to try on all 130 colours from the comfort of your sofa. If you’re still overwhelmed by the sheer choice and don’t know where to start, take Diane’s advice: ‘I’d say the stiletto lipsticks and the duo eyeshadows will be future cult classics, as well as the nail polishes.’ (Which, FYI, come in 39 shades.)

The impressive breadth of the collection is the latest example of how important personalisation has become in beauty. The Zara Beauty collection includes customisable eyeshadow palettes that let you mix and match your favourite six shades to create a bespoke palette, which comes in refillable sleek white casing. ‘We’re really excited about this element because it’s very personal,’ says Diane, who used the palette to create the pastel-toned, feel-good make-up looks you see on these pages.

Diane reveals that the 130-piece launch is only the beginning. ‘There are loads more products in the pipeline, including foundations, mascaras, a tinted balm.’ So why wait? ‘We wanted to launch with the products that we could find really amazing, high-quality formulas and ingredients for, that actually deliver the colour payoff we wanted,’ Diane says. Which is exactly how it should be.

The Best Beauty Buys from Zara Beauty

Photographer: Christine Hahn

Make-up: Diane Kendal, Creative Director for Zara Beauty

Creative Director: Carolyn Roberts

Beauty Director: Joely Walker

Styling Director: Molly Haylor

Stylist: Rebecca Dennett at Print and Contact

Hair: Rebekah Calo at Julian Watson Agency

Nails: Jin Soon Choi at Home Agency

Model: Luisana Gonzalez at Next Models

Model: Jia Tong at Muse Models NYC

Model: Aube Jolicoeur at The Lions Management

Casting and production: Nicholas Forbes Watson

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