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Google PlayIt’s late afternoon on the East Coast when Raeana Anaïs, fashion designer and design director for J.Cole’s Dreamville label, calls via Zoom from her creative studio. The Brooklyn native sports shoulder-grazing hoops paired with a jumpsuit from her collection. She has cascading curls, dewy skin, and her signature red lip. “I love the idea of putting art on,” she says of the Études x Henry Taylor shirt she’s wearing, an idea that permeates her work and her personal aesthetic. Raeana, or “Rae” as she’s known among friends, is a creative and a student of nuance. This is most evident in her approach to fashion where she uses lighting, color, and texture to convey not just a mood, but an attitude — tenue. The foundation of her approach to style has its roots in beauty and the lessons in maquillage, which she learned growing up and watching the matriarchs of her family. Most notably, they taught her the art and transformative power of the red lip.
Like most children, Rae loved to dabble in beauty, but it wasn’t until her early 20s that she “seriously wore a red lip,” a tradition she speaks of as a rite of passage — a practice passed down through generations. “We look at things our mothers [or] grandmothers did, and we put our own twist on it once we become women,” she says, and the corners of her lips curve into a smile, “I feel like I channel my mom and grandma whenever I have a red lip on.”
Red lipstick can be intimidating for novices venturing into the beauty world, but Rae argues reds are for everyone. It’s not a matter of whether you can wear red, but rather if you’ve found the right shade. I mention I’m partial to orange-reds with a satin-finish — like GXVE by Gwen Stefani’s “Anaheim Shine Clean High-Performance Satin Lipstick” in the shade Loara — which feels like a step up from my gloss girl days in the early aughts without compromising on shine. And she assures me, once again, it’s all about finding the shade that fits you.
As Rae boldly professes, “we make beauty;” how we go about loving and defining ourselves is up to us. And with confidence and the perfect red lip, let’s be honest: we’re damn near unstoppable.
