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.
I always moisturise after I've put the stickers on, by going around them. I get dry patches around my forehead and around my nose and then the spots are on my chin – even more so in pregnancy. Estée Lauder's tinted moisturiser is my favourite. It makes you just look snatched with a nice glow. I try to wear SPF every day, too, as I don't want to get wrinkles and skin damage because of the sun.
I also love my Shark LED Mask. There's a few different settings – one is for blemishes – and the little eye cooler bits are so nice.
Now that I'm pregnant I swear by this bump routine…
I've not only got a face skincare routine, I've also got the body to do as well. I think because I'm a lot bigger this time, I'm on edge. I'm obsessed with Mama Mio products. Last time with Axel, I put the Tummy Rub Butter and Oil on every morning and night. I'm trying to avoid overstretching and my skin's so itchy as well where it's stretched. I used it my whole pregnancy last time and I'm using it again now.
I once went to a party and Cheryl Cole asked me, “Babe, what under-eye concealer do you wear?”
Cheryl was like, “My eyes are quite dry and yours look really creamy.” I thought, “Cheryl asking me for a beauty hack? Are you kidding?”. I told her it was Lancôme and that's why I love it. I think they might have discontinued the colour that I get, which is annoying, but I went to Selfridges and bought 10 of them. So I still have lots of under-eye concealers in my makeup bag that have never been touched.
If I had 15 minutes to get ready for a party…
I'd middle part my hair and pull it into a slicked-back bun. Easy. Then I would probably do tinted moisturiser, concealer, mascara and maybe a few individual lashes on the ends.
Eyes are the nipples of the face, so when they've got a bit of mascara on, they're just beautiful. I feel naked without mascara on. It takes you from sleepy girl to 'I'm here, I'm in the room'. I love Maybelline mascaras. Ever since I was a kid, that was what I used to get in Boots. Remember Colossal Mascara? Now I use the Sky High Mascara.
Then I'd apply blush – it wakes me up a bit because I'm very pale. I use Benefit's Benetint on my lips and cheeks, a bit on my nose, as well, for that sun-kissed look. Or the Refy Cream Blush. Next, is a good brow using the Refy Brow Pencil and the L'Oréal Paris Brow Lamination.
I also love a good lip combo. I'm always nicking any sort of brown lip liner from my makeup artist. I like the brand Gen See for lining, Charlotte Tilbury Pillow Talk Medium lipstick for filling and then just a little lip gloss in the middle of my lips to make them look like a plump, kissable lip.
I swear by skin icing and cold showers…
I like to dip my face in a bowl of ice cubes for a couple of minutes. I feel my skin tightening. I feel myself getting a bit more alert and ready for the day.
I have cold showers, as well. I went through a phase of having really bad back acne. It got so bad at one point, and I was so insecure about it, that my mom started scrubbing it for me with a loofah. Then someone recommended ending my shower with cold water because then you're not left all steamy with enlarged pores. As soon as I started doing that, it really helped.
I don't try to meet toxic beauty standards – I'd rather make my own standards of what I want to be happy…
It's not about other people. A lot of the time when we put makeup on and we get dressed, they're like, “Oh, you're doing it for men.” I'm doing that for myself because I love makeup, I love to play dress up. I love feeling that way but I also love the clean girl aesthetic so much and I'm so glad that it's become way more of a thing in the last few years.
So I think we should just make our own standards of what we want to be happy. I love being on stage. It's my happy place and I feel so in my power. I'm still myself, but I'm just my best self because I know I'm using my talent. And also being a mom – that's a role that I just love.
The biggest misconception about me is that I care about what other people think – I don't…
It's really hard for women out there. It's impossible. Why would we spend all day trying to please everybody? It's so irrelevant. I don't care what people think. I feel sorry for the men and misogynists in the world that go out of their way to comment on women's bodies – the way they look, the idea of what perfection is. I'm like, “Hon, you're not it either.”
And I'm not saying that to be a bitch. I'm just saying, I don't care. I pity you. I feel for you. I'm sad that's your life and you feel like you need to go out of your way to bring someone else down. Everybody else out there is living their best life. They don't care about what Darren's saying or what Julia's saying online being a troll. It's so stupid, isn't it? And they don't know you as a person, so why do they feel they need to comment on you?
It's okay not to be okay. And not to have your shit together all of the time. It's normal, it's human…
There's still a weird misconception about mental health. It's a bit taboo still, isn't it? It needs to be normalised and it needs to be spoken about because so many people are suffering. They shouldn't feel like they're the only person going through it.
Agoraphobia is quite hard to manage because you don't understand it fully. For me, I was just like, why is this happening to me? It got so bad that I just couldn't leave the house. I started off doing therapy and then we'd make goals and set challenges. Even just talking about them would make my stomach turn.
Then we started driving around doing my therapy in the back of a car and my therapist came to work with me. I think that helped massively. She would kind of coach me through the panics while they were happening and I started to slowly learn that maybe I can actually manage them.
I'm still not a 100%. I still don't like doing long car journeys; I still get stressed and feel a bit trapped when I'm in certain situations. I've worked on myself so much because it was hard and I didn't want to be that person.
For more from Fiona Embleton, GLAMOUR's Associate Beauty Director, follow her on Instagram @fiembleton.
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