Hi Allure, I’m Alia Bhatt, and here are some of my favorite things.
Best of My Beauty Bag
I call this the Alia Shade. The reason I call it the Alia Shade is because it’s so me. This is my favorite shade from the L’Oreal Infallible range. It is long-lasting and it’s the Shade 601. It’s sort of pink, but it’s not fully pink. It’s like a pinky nude, which is my sweet spot. I don’t even have a mirror in front of me and I’ve done it. Is it okay? Where there’s makeup, there’s a sponge with a little heart, and you can separate the heart. I could break it up together, and they’re pretty cute and compact. For me, I constantly have a small, what I call a coverage kit, which is my concealer, my powder, a powder brush, and a sponge. I’m very finicky about little pimple marks or little zits and stuff. So I keep this with me at all times because I really like to continuously cover and go into a meeting or go out. Even sometimes when I’m sitting at home, my friends are over, and it’s just my friends. But I would still cover it up just because I feel like it distracts my eyes if it’s not. So for that, this comes in super handy.
So the next one, a current favorite/need, I would say, is this nail brush. It was given to me by my makeup artist/friend Punit. And the reason is, okay, we can see my nails currently; they’re like nothing nails. I have nothing on, no polish, no gel because I’m filming an action movie, and it’s not a good idea to have any false nails on while you’re doing action and hurt yourself and somebody else. My nails are clean right now, but while I’m filming, they’re not. They get really dirty, and I’m a little finicky about things getting sort of looking, you know, you get the gist. So I’m literally scrubbing all the time. And even if it’s like, “Cut Alia, you have 20 minutes for the shot.” Cool, cool, cool. Gimme the cut. So I’m like scrubbing because I’m just like, just get it out of me even though I know it’s gonna get dirty again. I don’t know what it is, but it gives me a lot of satisfaction. So this is a favorite slash essential right now.
So the next one would be my brow brush. Someone once told me that getting out of the house when you have not much time on, all you need to do is your brows, put on like lip color, and maybe your lashes, and that’s about it. So I’m really particular about my brows of late. I don’t do too much to them. If you can see, my brows are not filled in right now, but I like to keep them sort of filled out. I feel it makes your face look more vulnerable.
Guilty Pleasures
I’m gonna start with watching reels. Okay, so there was a time when I was like, “I don’t watch reels, and I’m so whatever.” I took people’s photographs and I’m not into reels. And then now slowly but surely I have joined the reel bandwagon. A lot of random people cleaning their houses, Sunday resets, Friday resets, people’s 5:00 AM to 9:00 AM morning routines. I don’t know why. It’s just extremely therapeutic watching those reels. And then, of course, there’s a lot of baby-related things because I’m always like stopping at any baby-related video that is, you know, in terms of education and upbringing and things for them. I do get beauty reels. I recently cut my hair short. I was finding different ways to sort of self-style and different clipping, hair clipping techniques and different ways to sort of dry them naturally but also make it look like sort of beachy curly cool. So yeah, a lot of hair reels as well.
So my next guilty pleasure is this particular cake that you get at Magnolias; it’s Tres Leches milk cake. I’m not sure if I’m pronouncing that right because I always get it wrong most of the time, but it doesn’t matter because it’s really yummy. And I have to admit it’s a guilty pleasure because I’m guilty of eating it many times. But I feel no guilt actually because it’s very pleasurable. My next guilty pleasure and guilty as charged because this is something that I picked up during the lockdown is watching “Too Hot to Handle” on Netflix. You might be like, “Oh Alia, why aren’t you watching a movie which is like giving you some depth and you’re learning something about acting or performing and stuff?” And I’m like, honestly, I just wanna sit on my floor and take out my waxing strips and wax my legs while I’m watching “Too Hot to Handle.” And even now, sometimes when I’m too tired at the end of the day, I switch on “Too Hot to Handle” because there’s a season, I think, every couple of months. I watch a lot of reality TV. There’s this show in India which is really famous called “Big Boss.” I mean, it’s a global show. But in India, especially last season on the OTT version, my sister was in it. So I was binge-watching that. You know, you can clock into the live camera and see the house live and what’s going on live on your app. And I found myself doing that in the middle of a shoot and in the middle of work and stuff. But it was really nice because I found a whole new dynamic to my sister that existed before.
Indian Cinema
When I think of Indian cinema, the first name that comes to my mind is Shah Rukh Khan. I think it would come to many people’s minds, and especially one of his dialogues. I don’t know whether it’s just his dialogue or just that particular moment. There’s this moment in his film “Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge,” which is iconic, where he’s looking at Kajol walking away and he says to himself, [SRK speaking Hindi] which means if she loves me, she’ll turn back, she’ll look back at me, and then he goes, “Palat.” Then he’s waiting for her to turn, “Palat,” and then suddenly on cue, like she turns, and then the music just swells and it’s like butterflies, goosebumps, everything put together. But I think every girl has wanted that sort of recreation in her life where, you know, you look back and you know there’s a guy looking at you or he’s waiting for you to look at him. Something like that, I don’t know what it is, but I think everything about Shah Rukh Khan just spells love. And to me, that moment was just all love.
My next favorite, favorite sort of impactful moment from Indian cinema again would be Aishwarya Rai Bachchan. I think for me a lot of my early understanding of movies, especially Indian movies, was music and songs and dance. It’s a very, very large part of the celebratory factor of our movies. And when it comes to learning or being inspired by somebody who’s embodied dance in the most beautiful way on screen, I can’t help but think of Aishwarya Rai Bachchan. She was absolutely and is still just mesmerizing. She also gave me a lot of direction, intellect. Whenever I had a song, I would go to YouTube, type “Aishwarya Rai songs,” and it would come out. I would be looking at all her songs just to catch her expressions and the way she sort of moves from one move to another, the ease, the way she sort of just lets herself be. But at the same time, it’s so perfect, and it’s so precise, and she’s just beautiful to look at.
When it comes to Indian cinema, there’s one person who sort of redefined/defined beauty, and that is Rekha. She is just an icon for the ages, whether it was her red lip or her long hair or the way she did her eyes, the iconic flowers and the gajras in her hair. Just that look in her eyes, which of course you cannot create; it only comes from within. But she truly has left, I think, the largest impact in India and all over the world with the beauty standards that she set. I started working at the age of 18, so I sort of was brought up in the public eye in a way. If I were to look back at myself when I was younger, I remember I would cringe and look away at all my beauty moments at that time. But one thing that comes to you with time, and I don’t think I’ve still sort of gotten completely, is stature, gait, and how to hold your own when it comes to sort of crowded high-pressure, you know, out there sort of moment. She’s really inspired me in that department.
The Best of My Everyday Hair Essentials
Can a girl have more hair ties? I don’t think so. And this is just 0.01% of it because this is what goes along with me. I have a bunch by my bedside, in my bathroom, at my dressing table. Okay, so I’m never out of hair ties. I really like these silky sort of hair ties because when I’m sleeping, you know, at night or something, I don’t want my hair to be pulled at. And I read somewhere that the harder ones sort of damage the hair. So this is what I use for when I need a look, when I need it to be super tight and sleek, and this is what I use when I am at home chilling and just sort of need it to be more relaxed and easy.
The next one would be this, the L’Oreal Paris Elnett Hair Spray. This actually belongs to my mother-in-law. We were going for a movie premiere together and we were just reaching because there was gonna be media there and stuff. So I was like, “Mama, do you have any hairspray?” And she was like, “Yeah, it’s this Elnett.” I tried it, and I was like, “This is so good.” But I don’t like to overuse hair sprays, but when I do, this is what I use because it holds everything in place without making it look too stiff or crunchy. So yes, I’m a big fan of this one.
The last thing that I would say I have and I think I need is the current obsession I have with the Japanese bob. I have been wanting to do it for quite some time, and now that I’ve done it, I feel like I’m starting to find new ways to style it and wear it differently. I’ve been cutting my hair into layers, layering it into layers, and just finding new ways to do it. And I would say this hairstyle is super easy and takes me less than five minutes to do.
Conclusion
So that was a little glimpse into my world. I’m always looking to learn new things and try new products, but these favorites are my go-tos for a reason.