Ellie Goldstein is Allure’s December cover star, and the photoshoot for the affair, shot by Vicki King and styled by Camilla Pole, is pure fashion brilliance.
“Ellie Goldstein Always Wanted to Be Famous. Now She Is,” the cover story boldly proclaims. Having appeared in a recent campaign for Gucci Beauty and Vogue Italia, the 18-year-old, British-born model told the magazine, in the accompanying interview, “I love to be seen.”
For the shoot, Goldstein was styled in some lovely pieces from Molly Goddard, most famous for her voluminous chiffon dresses, which spawned copycats across the industry. There’s also a particularly notable Marques Almeida dress, past winner of the 300,000 euro LVMH prize. It’s from the Fall/Winter 2020 collection, seen here, and features billowing cuffs and a ruffled hem in matching black satin. It’s a popular look in the current fashion age, but Almeida’s dress shines in its form-fitting cotton—at least I believe it’s cotton—bust, which adds a contemporary edge to a motif that tends to date itself.
There’s also a wonderful Molly Goddard bow, true to the designer’s whimsical aesthetic, that’s paired with Christopher Kane dress and Woldorf bodysuit, which all work in tandem to create the physicality of a ballerina, even with the black color-blocking. And, in a year where social media saw a massive influx of Euphoria-esque makeup techniques, it’s nice to see that makeup artist Siddhartha Simone adopted current trends into a fantastically whimsical pearl embellishment across the bridge of Goldstein’s nose.
Done poorly, they might look like a pox. But here, on Goldstein, I suddenly have the urge to glue pearls across my face.
The shining star of the shoot, besides Goldstein herself, is the powder blue used as eyeshadow throughout, seen most prominently on the cover. I only barely remember my babysitter in the early 2000’s excessively layering her baby blue eyeshadow, but something about the lightness of the shade used by Simone, coupled with the bare, almost-overplucked eyebrows, is delightful.
I’m most likely not the only one who has found myself looking less at fashion magazines this year, as there isn’t any money for clothes to spare, and I’m not particularly in the mood for glamour and excess. But as this Allure shoot demonstrates, fashion is at its best when it inspires something in the viewer—like any good art, I suppose. Later in the interview, Goldstein told Allure that “Ten years from now, I want to be all over the world.” Personally, I don’t doubt dream that in the slightest, and the fashion world shouldn’t either.