When I meet Perrie Edwards, it’s backstage in an empty bar a few hours before an intimate solo performance. She’s dressed in a sheer, electric blue gown that accentuates her baby bump. “Hiya, are we filming?” she asks as she walks through the door, her glam squad in tow. When I shake my head she grins, kicks off her four-inch platform shoes and settles on the sofa, curling her bare feet underneath her as if this is just a cosy chat between girlfriends.
That’s the thing about Perrie. Despite a stratospheric career in the band Little Mix, which became one of the best-selling girl groups of all time, and a successful debut solo album, she still has an infectious girl-next-door charm.
Perrie is funny, relatable and completely unfiltered – whether she’s talking about motherhood (Perrie is mum to four-year-old Axel and is expecting a second child) or her battle with acne, which is why she is CeraVe’s ambassador for their Stop The Pop, Rock The Patch campaign.
Here Perrie Edwards speaks to Glamour about skin, self-care and empowerment…
When I was in Little Mix, I would sleep in my makeup and then just go over it in the morning – no wonder my skin was atrocious…
Growing up I never had bad skin. It was more that I just hated my skin. I was very freckly, so I was very insecure. Nobody around me had freckles, so I was the odd one out and I felt really ugly as a kid. And then, as I started to get older, I was like, “No, they are so nice and I need to embrace them and now I love my freckles.”
But then I started to get spotty. It was more when I was in the band and maybe down to the amount of makeup I was wearing. It was a vicious cycle because the more spotty I got, the more I wanted to put concealer on and then there were the different time zones, lack of sleep, all of that.
It was crazy. We used to have scheduled glam for four hours, so if we had an 8:00am start, it was a 4:00am start for us. Me and the girls would sleep with our makeup on because our schedule was so intense. I could wake up the next day, have touchups and go to work, but have a few more hours sleep.
Now I never sleep with makeup on. Your skin can’t heal when it’s got a full blanket on, can it? The Lancôme makeup remover is a godsend and it’s so gentle when I’ve got a full face of makeup on. I soak a cleansing sponge in it as it kind of sucks all the makeup away. Then I’ll use my CeraVe oil cleanser.
I used to feel like I needed to whack the makeup on to feel pretty…
It was a phase, as well, because trends change, makeup changes and what was cool isn’t cool anymore. I love that girls today are stepping out with lovely tinted moisturised faces and their spot stickers on.
This whole ‘clean girl aesthetic’ is probably my favourite because I just love not having to try as hard. In the mornings I’m useless. I just cleanse and then use my CeraVe spot stickers. They’re so good and once they’re on, you can’t even see them, which is fantastic.
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