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We all love Lizzo. She’s our best friend, she’s bold, confident and just so damn fly. So when Urban Decay launched their Pretty Different campaign and named Lizzo one of the brand ambassadors, we were like, “Damn straight. Someone better recognize!”

Recently, the brand reached out  to EBONY to offer the chance for a quick chat with our celebrity BFF Lizzo and Wende Zomnir, Urban Decay’s creative drector and co-founder. We dove into Bad Bunny’s nails, the product that makes us our lips look like a million bucks and why being different rules.

EBONY: How did the brand campaign Pretty Different come about?
Zomnir: We started Urban Decay back in 1996, and one of our philosophies was that makeup shouldn’t be about covering up your flaws or trying to achieve someone else’s standard of beauty. It should be about who you are and showing the world that, and that’s what we’ve been trying to do with the brand since back then. I know that is a common thread for a lot of brands today, but back in ’96, people thought we were bananas. But we’ve always subscribed to the idea that beauty should come from within, and beauty products should be used as tools to reflect that. The brand statement was always that this is makeup for girls and boys who wanted to show the world who they are and put their own stamp on it. Urban Decay’s Pretty Different campaign encompasses everything we stand for as a brand. It’s beauty with an edge and espouses a message that being different is OK. You don’t have to fit into a box to be considered really beautiful. In fact, what is beautiful about you is what is different. And being different and expressing yourself should be celebrated.

EBONY: What does beauty mean to you?
Zomnir: Beauty is really about people who are really free with who they are, not feeling constrained by the boxed-in definition of what beauty is and not feeling that they have to aspire to that. Everyone should feel that they are always enough. In the past, the industry pushed the concept that we were not enough and that we needed to try certain cosmetics and creams to be so. Luckily, the industry has evolved. Now, it’s just be whoever you are, and here are the tools to enhance, showcase or do whatever you want.
Lizzo: Beauty is such a universal thing. Everyone has their own opportunity to be beautiful, to create beauty, to have it. I personally think that nature is beautiful and that there is beauty in being natural. I’m getting back to basics. I’m loving my natural hair, my skin without any makeup and my body without any clothes—just being naked and lying around and enjoying myself as I was from my mother’s womb. If you can find beauty in your natural state, you can find beauty with a whole face full of makeup with a wig on and wearing waist trainer. You can be beautiful in any way you choose, but it does start from within.

EBONY: Why did you choose Lizzo as one of your brand ambassadors for the Pretty Different campaign?
Zomnir: I love Lizzo! She has incredible energy, and she really takes what Urban Decay stands for in terms of expressing who you are in a beautiful and compelling way. She currently embodies that more than anybody out there. You can’t help but be drawn to her; her body-positive image is so important right now. She’s also making amazing music! And I love that she loooves makeup, and that she actually wears and plays with it. She’s super-engaged with the brand and with beauty. Beauty is a huge part of her life, so it was a natural dream fit.

EBONY: Lizzo, what are your thoughts on people transforming their identity through their look?
Lizzo: We are definitely moving into a generation where we can wear who we are—wear our heart on our sleeve and be an individual. That what’s Urban Decay represents as well—the individualist and playing around and breaking the beauty rules. I think the beauty rules were meant to be broken in the first place. I am excited by all the people who are challenging the norms, like gender norms. Hopefully, we can move into a world where blue doesn’t just mean boy and pink doesn’t just mean girl and we can wear all of the colors. And we can wear the long-ass acrylics like Bad Bunny. I like that type of sh*t! But to each his own. Personally, I’m also classic. I’m very girly girly.

EBONY: What were your thoughts when the brand first approached you about being a brand ambassador?
Lizzo: I was definitely excited! Urban Decay has always been a brand that’s been outside of the box and is experimental like me. I am pretty different, but I am also pretty pretty. You ain’t never seen nothing like this! But seriously, I thought that moreso than any other makeup company out there, Urban Decay could bring my beauty to light in the way that I wanted, on my terms, and not to have to follow any of the rules.

EBONY: What are your favorite products from the brand?
Lizzo: I am obsessed with their All Nighter Long-Lasting Makeup Setting Spray and their lip glosses. I’ve always used them. The Hi-Fi Shine Ultra Cushion Lipgloss in Goldmine, a glittery gold, is my favorite because my lips are a million dollars.


EBONY: Who’s your all-time fave beauty icon?
Lizzo: I would have to say Diana Ross. She is always superglam. And that hair is pretty major! I love her.

Check out Urban Decay’s Pretty Different campaign below:



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