Lauren Conrad is so over The Hills. Today, her reality is that of a successful businesswoman, designing clothes for Kohl's and her new line, Paper Crown. And more than ever, she's trying hard to keep her romantic relationship off-camera. Check out these behind-the-scenes shots of the California girl's Malibu cover shoot. For our interview with Conrad, pick up the May issue of Allure, on newsstands April 19! This issue with Lauren Conrad on the cover is also the first issue displayed on the new Allure Magazine app for your iPad! You can now tap, swipe, and zoom your way into the world of beauty, and it's free!
Inspired by 1960s Pirelli-calendar images, Conrad's shoot look was "wild but sophisticated," said makeup artist Stephane Marais.
The reality-TV-star-turned-designer's own style is decidedly more girl-next-door. She arrived at the location—the beachfront Malibu, California, home of Harry Gesner, a self-taught, eco-friendly architect—wearing flip-flops, distressed AG jeans, a T-shirt, and an owl pendant necklace from her LC Lauren Conrad Kohl's line. "I'm not a sexy person. I'm OK with it," she said. "I've never been the sexy girl. Whenever I've had a boyfriend, he's always been like, 'Oh, you're cute.'"
When fans of MTV's Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County and The Hills meet Conrad, they often shower her with backhanded compliments, telling her she is "different" than they thought she would be (read: smarter) and looks "better" and "younger" in person. "I'm still deciding if that's a nice thing to say," Conrad said. "Is that like, 'You don't look great on TV?'"
During the last season of The Hills, she might have been phoning it in a little: "Towards the end, I was so tired. I was showing up to the club in flip-flops, and [the cameramen] would be like, 'Great, now we can't film your feet, because you couldn't bother putting on a pair of shoes,'" she said.
"I wanted it to look like second-day hair," said hairstylist Serge Normant (shown here). He faked the sexy, unstyled effect with a curling iron to create a "soft, uncontrolled kind of wave." With a round brush, he added height to Conrad's crown and put a bit of pomade on the ends of her hair.
Her light brown hair with honey highlights was the result of a recent cut and color by Kristin Ess at Chris McMillan's salon in Beverly Hills. "I'm never happy keeping my hair one color," said Conrad.
"You have two good angles and a hundred bad ones," said Conrad. "If I'm shopping and I see paparazzi my [hand]bag goes directly to my thighs." But the star added that she's never felt a need to be superthin. Nor has she wanted plastic surgery, like her former costar and roommate Heidi Montag, who in January 2010 revealed a staggering ten cosmetic procedures that had all been done in the same day, including a chin reduction, butt augmentation, and triple-D breast implants. "I saw People magazine just like everybody else," Conrad said. "I don't think this is a happy story at all. There's just no right answer there."
"I was 17 whenI got signed [to Laguna Beach], and that's vulnerable age anyway," Conrad said. "I was still figuring out who I was. To be on television and told a million things that are wrong with you was hard, but I very quickly decided that I just had to be me. I watched people change everything about themselves, and they still weren't happy."
Marais brushed on a chestnut eye shadow and applied liquid eyeliner to her top lids and pencil eyeliner to her lower lids. He then filled and darkened her brows with eye shadow and an eyeliner pencil. He combined a pink blush with a bronzer to contour Conrad's cheeks and make them glow. For a "cute" subdued mouth, Marais applied a coral shade of lipstick.
At lunch Conrad ate turkey breast with the crew and spoke about her family affectionately but didn't utter a word about her boyfriend of two years, actor Kyle Howard. With her twenty-fifth birthday then just days away, rumors were swirling that the pair planned to celebrate with an engagement, which their publicists denied. (He bought her an iPad case, not a ring.) At the end of the shoot, Howard, who lives in Malibu, arrived to take Conrad out for an early dinner—where they successfully avoided the paparazzi.
-Credits at allure.com
