Gucci Westman created Nicole Kidman’s luminous, ’70s-inflected 2026 Met Gala look using Clé de Peau Beauté. Here’s the full breakdown of the products, techniques, and the clean beauty brand Westman built on her own terms.
Gucci Westman has been doing Nicole Kidman’s makeup for years — the 2024 Met Gala, the 2025 Golden Globes, the 2026 Oscars — and at this year’s Met Gala, Westman worked exclusively with Clé de Peau Beauté to create a warm, bronzed look with a barely-there nudey lip and a subtle ’70s ease running through all of it. “I was so inspired by the craftsmanship of the look, especially working with Chanel. Nicole’s dress was just exquisite,” Westman said in a statement. “For me, it was about honoring that same level of beauty through her skin, focusing on the radiance, brightness, and tones, and bringing out her lips, skin, and eyes in a way that feels true to her natural tonality,” Westman said. The nod to the 1970s in her hair and makeup created an effortless, undone feeling, like Jane Birkin. “I love that sense of ease and femininity. And knowing she was there with her daughter, experiencing it together for the first time, felt so special. Nicole inviting her into her world like that felt incredibly tender. They both looked so beautiful together.”
The ease is built from technique. Westman layered warm peachy bronze tones through the eyes — kept slightly rusty to draw out Kidman’s blue irises — with brown liner along the lower lashes and a soft kick of liquid liner at the corners. “I worked in warm, peachy bronze tones through the eyes, keeping them slightly rusty to bring out her blue eyes, with brown liner along the lower lashes and a touch of liquid liner close to the lash line with a soft kick at the corners,” she explained. “A little mascara on the bottom lashes adds to that subtle 70s feeling. I kept the lip nudey and softly flushed. I love layering, mixing creams and powders, then pressing a bit of cream back on top to bring back that fresh radiance. I also add a few soft freckles for a sense of youthfulness. Everything is softly blended, creating a natural fluidity between the skin, cheeks, lips, and eyes. I’m so grateful for the beautiful color ways and textures of the Clé de Peau Beauté products. It’s really about emphasizing Nicole and all her glory.”
French-inspired artistry
Westman grew up outside Los Angeles before her family relocated to Sweden when she was 10, and at 18 she moved to Switzerland to learn French, living with a family whose mother happened to be a fashion critic. That woman brought Westman to the Paris fashion shows — an early and formative immersion in European dressing and beauty that shaped her aesthetic in ways she’s carried ever since. Formal training at the prestigious École Chauveau in Paris came first, followed by artistry and special effects work back in Los Angeles. Her career accelerated when she began shooting Italian Vogue and landed the Harper’s Bazaar cover with Cameron Diaz and Patrick Demarchelier. Grace Coddington brought her into American Vogue — and as Coddington tends to do when she believes in someone, she told everyone at the magazine about her.
WWD named Westman its 2026 Style Awards Red Carpet Makeup Artist of the Year. Her client list reads like a study in women who want to look like themselves: Kidman, Jennifer Aniston, Anne Hathaway, Cameron Diaz. The common thread is skin that registers as skin, eyes that look open rather than overdone, lips that seem to belong to the face wearing them.
“I don’t ever want to look too makeup-y — I feel like it makes me look older,” she told Into The Gloss. It’s a sentence that could function as a brand manifesto. “I’m looking for transparency and authenticity,” she’s said. “I try to combine makeup and skin care, which is actively doing something, but in a gentle manner.”
Inside Westman Atelier
In 2018, Westman launched Westman Atelier with her husband David Neville, co-founder of Rag & Bone — a collaboration that brought together her two decades of editorial and red carpet expertise alongside his fluency in building luxury brands. The founding concept was precise from the start. She had identified something that didn’t yet exist: a prestige makeup line with clean credentials that didn’t ask you to choose between your values and a product that actually worked. “It all started with the perfect makeup wardrobe — a fast, easy, intuitive lineup of five simple products that gave absolutely anyone the power to create beautiful skin,” she said.
The brand operates on a plant-first approach, with formulas that meet the European Union’s rigorous clean ingredient standards and contain no parabens, PEGs, or phthalates. The plant-first philosophy carries an honest caveat, though: if a natural option can’t deliver the performance a product requires, the brand works with labs to find the safest, most responsible synthetic alternative. It’s a pragmatic position, and a refreshingly frank one. “We wanted things that would actually make a difference — that we could be honest about and proud of,” she told Glossy.
The brand’s visual identity was partly inspired by fine fragrance — specifically, Westman’s admiration for the way fragrance advertising carries a sense of timelessness and ritual that most makeup lines never reach. She wanted that quality for cosmetics, and the aesthetic commitment carried all the way through to packaging: the Vital Skin Foundation Stick and Lit Up Highlight Stick arrive in weighty refillable metal tubes with magnetic closures, objects you handle with a different kind of attention than you would something disposable. Refillable compacts and lipsticks extend the same ethos, making high-performance clean beauty and considered design inseparable by design.
What she used on Nicole
For the 2026 Met Gala, the look was built from the ground up with Clé de Peau Beauté. Skincare preparation started with the Syntactif Daytime Moisturizer and UV Protective Cream SPF 50+, followed by the Radiant Fluid Foundation Natural SPF 25 in O10/Light Ocher and the Radiant Corrector for Eyes in Ivory to even and illuminate the skin. Warmth came from the Powder Blush Duo in 103/Peach Tulip and the Luminizing Face Enhancer in 202/Golden Galaxy. The Eye Color Quad in 8/Warm Ocean Sunset, Perfect Lash Mascara in Black, Lipstick Matte in both 110/Exuberant and 122/Pink Petunia, and Cream Rouge Shine in 201 Calanthe Orchid built the soft, ’70s-inflected color story, with the Translucent Loose Powder in Light setting it all in place. All products are available at Clé de Peau Beauté.
As for Westman Atelier, the line continues to expand — always edited, always curated, always oriented around skin that looks lived-in rather than worked-over. “I love the fantasy, but I also want my products to add joy to your life,” she told Into The Gloss. “I think I’m quite different from, say, Pat McGrath or another makeup artist brand, because I’m more of a lifestyle….I love the fantasy, but I also want my products to add joy to your life.”
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