Lauren Reid: Beauty and Beyond

If you’ve read our previous cover story on Lauren Reid or watched her 5-Minute Makeup Challenge, you’d know by now that underneath the fierceness she portrays while donning structured and sophisticated yet unconventional designs by Rosenthal Tee, that there’s more to her than being just “James Reid’s sister,” “Nadine Lustre’s friend,” or “the model from Folded and Hung.“

Beyond what is publicly known and what we merely see on social media, Lauren is unabashedly herself with no filters or pretensions. She arrives 15 minutes early to our dinner interview and casually sips on red wine while waiting, talks about her brothers with the most genuine twinkle in her eyes, cuts up a fresh avocado and starts eating it during our photo shoot (while everyone else munches on pizza), dances on set any chance she gets, laughs hysterically at herself when she can’t remember or mispronounces a Filipino word, and insists on driving herself around despite the crazy traffic.

More than an edgy face, the adorable accent, and being a fitspiration to many (have you seen her Instagram videos doing high-intensity workouts?!), Lauren has so much more to unleash—and she’s only getting started.

What do you think right now is the most unconventional beauty product in the market?

Well, I mean, there are a lot of things out there that you don’t really need. But then people want it because the marketing is just so good. I’m trying to think. From makeup to skin care?

Yeah—what have you encountered that you found sort of different?

There were things such as in the Korean market—snail mucus kind of skin care. And for me, initially I was like, “Woah, that is—what are you doing? Like really? That seems so wrong,” but then if you look at the history of it, back in the time they used to just let snails walk all over their face to get rid of redness, to get rid of rashes, things like that. I just saw this the other day, like a documentary.

To clear up their skin, there’s this guy, I don’t know from what country, maybe Europe, and it took him almost 10 years to create this snail mucus extraction. Because back in the day, you’d have to kill the snail to get the slime from them but this way, it kind of steams it out. He provides that to the Korean skin care market. For me, that’s a really strange beauty product. But then looking back into the history of it, it’s something that I would be willing to try actually. You know, anything that you can kind of do to, you know, make it that much better. I’m all about that.

How about your signature look? What do you usually wear?

Signature look? For one, I’m often not wearing makeup on a day-off because I’ll be at the gym or I’ll be out doing errands. And I’m happy without makeup. With my skin, you know, I’m okay with my skin and my eyes without eyeliner. When I was younger, I put the eyeliner all the way around and it just wouldn’t be a line—it would be big and thick, and the teachers at school would tell me, “Lauren, go to the bathroom and lessen that makeup.” (laughs) But I wouldn’t have makeup remover so I’d kind of do this and rub my eyes, then the whole thing would just be black and it would look even worse. (laughs)

Do you do your own makeup?

Yeah, I did a course before called Beauty Therapy when I was in year 10 to 12. It was like a University Course. I didn’t do it because I really wanted to be a makeup artist or anything—it was kind of just for my own knowledge, and I needed a few extra courses to finish my year. You select what you want to do. Like I didn’t do Math for the last two years. I didn’t do Science, I didn’t do History. I did Business, Art, and Beauty.

I wish we did that here!

I think that’s why I went back to Australia because I couldn’t do that here, and I just had no idea about Biology and stuff. And I kind of knew that I wasn’t going to use it because I became a Human Resources professional, and so it wasn’t really necessary. I did the things I would actually use in life, which I think they should totally implement, you know, everywhere.

At the moment, I use a hypoallergenic face wash. I use VMV Hypoallergenics. I use their face wash and their oil makeup remover. I also use a serum which I found from Healthy Options, which is Vitamin C and then lip balm is basically what I use. I like the Burt’s Bees colored one. I don’t use lipstick or lipliner because I like how the no makeup-makeup look looks, so I don’t have to go too heavy with it. However, sometimes I like to do really light foundation and a dark red.

Do you always get the same makeup artist?

No, sometimes I use different ones. I’ve used Mac Igarta. I use him usually because he kind of understands the whole a little bit editorial, a little bit no-makeup makeup—so he hits the nail on the head. He’s James’ makeup artist. He knows how to do men’s makeup really well and he’s adapted men’s kind of makeup unto me as well with adding a girly kind of twang to it. Aside from him, Nadine’s makeup artist, Jelly Eugenio, he is amazing. He is just amazing.

Moving onto your lifestyle, were you always into working out and dancing?

When I was young, like really young and still living with my dad and my family, my dad would put us into a lot. I’ve done AFL, I’ve done swimming, diving, I’ve done gymnastics, I’ve done golf, I’ve done archery, I’ve done all of these different sports, and I loved it! I loved being so active.

But when I moved out, I didn’t do it anymore because I didn’t have a parent pushing me to do it and it kind of all just stopped. That’s when I didn’t eat quite right. I ate more McDonald’s because we weren’t allowed when we were young. I suddenly had the freedom, and I was like, “Yeah, McDonald’s every night!” I actually ended up gaining quite a bit of weight. I went from being 45 kilos to about 60 or 65 kilos maybe so that was not good at all. I kind of realized that eventually, I wanted to change that because I wasn’t happy with the weight that I had gained. I educated myself online and whatnot—different workouts, cardio, this and that. But it went from all fads—I went from paleo and that and that. I tried all these different things and it just wasn’t working. I was just fluctuating all the time.

Until I realized that it’s a lifestyle—it’s not a diet. You really have to change things in your life. You have to be active and make good food choices, and that’s when things kind of turned around for me. My partner at the time, I was with him for five years, he was also very active so we would go to the gym together. We’d do our usual 9 to 5 on weekdays and the weekends, we’d go and do things like kayaking out in the harbor or we’d do rock climbing and different things which is awesome because I had someone with me to do all that. We’d go bike riding in different places so that was awesome. I had a really active lifestyle. Here, I don’t have a 9 to 5 job anymore. Work varies each day—so I wake up early, work out, and do what I need to do during the day, and then work out again at night. Every opportunity when I’m not doing anything, I will work out. And I’m not the skinniest kind of models, but I like my body and I’ve got shape to me. I still want to cut down and lean out so that I’m rock hard and I want six pack abs, but that takes time. You try to do it and you’ll just end up going through another diet fat phase—like crash dieting, and I don’t want do that. So I’m taking it slow and figuring out what my body needs.

What’s your favorite type or workout?

Favorite is circuit training. It’s my favorite because it’s the most effective, and you can do it any time of the day. I mean, I wake up and I’ve got a whiteboard just on the wall. We have a gym at home—I set that up for the boys so that they can just workout at home, especially if they don’t have enough time to go to the gym. We’d have to pay for everyone to go to the gym anyways, so we might as well just have one at home. We had the space for it. Now we’re all fit and happy and healthy. Yeah. So I wake up, then I write a workout on the whiteboard, and I’ll change it up every day depending on the body part that I want to do. I’ve been doing this for a few years now. I do a hundred different exercises that I can just all merge together. I’ll do something stationary, then I’ll do an active workout—like lateral jumps side to side and so your heart rate goes up, and then it stops and it takes a break, then it goes up again and you’ll find that you sweat more and it’s great. I love it!

How do you couple it with the eating part? Are there certain types of food you avoid?

I’m lactose intolerant, and also gluten intolerant. I actually get rashes on my body but sometimes, I just eat it anyway because there’s nothing else to eat. I keep it in my diet a little bit because when I did remove it completely, I felt amazing but then if I did have a little bit by accident, like if I ate in a restaurant and I ordered a lychee shake and I said please don’t put any milk in it because I’m allergic, and then they gave me the lychee shake and I took a sip, what happens is my stomach bloats and then I need to go to the bathroom and there are rashes on me and it’s just really not fun at all. I also kind of bloat in my face and it’s really not funny. I ended up tearing in the restaurant and kind of like, “Nooo!” because I knew what was going to happen to me. If you can’t keep it out of your diet completely, just keep it out a little bit and so if you do eat it, it’s alright. You may react a little bit, but it won’t be that bad.

At the moment, I’m trying to lean out and get hard and tough, and I usually eat fish. I eat a lot of vegetables, broccoli, and asparagus. Usually, I’ll just steam it and add pepper and lemon, or hot sauce on it even. I try to eat a lot of vegetables. Chicken, I will eat. I don’t cook red meat in the house. I just believe it’s better not to consume that.

Do you have cheat days?

Yeah, I’ll eat chocolate, but what I do throughout the day is I keep track of what I eat. If I’ve eaten, you know, just tuna or asparagus or all super lean and clean foods throughout the day, then I’ll say, “Oh, I’m going to have fries later.” Or I’ll try to eat that earlier on in the day so that I can work it off throughout the afternoon and night. I don’t really deprive myself.

Aside from being a health advocate, is there any other thing that you support or live by?

Living a sustainable lifestyle and being kind to the environment. Something that I’m really big on is plastic bags—you know, reuse it and reuse it. Keep the lights off, don’t let the water run—it’s a really big thing in Australia and I noticed that it’s not really a big thing here. Recycling your garbage, a lot of people don’t do that. I think it’s necessary. Because if you think about it, Australia has less than a quarter of the population of the Philippines, right? In the Philippines, they don’t really do it here. They do it in villages but the greater masses don’t do it. All the garbage kind of just goes to landfills and back into the water, and it’s just not good for the environment. I’m really big on making everybody kind of work together to do it all. I had a charity when I was young. I started a charity when I was 13, because cancer is the number one disease that kills people in Australia. We get hats donated from communities for children, and even for adults, to protect them. I did that for a while with my best friend when we were 13. Her mom helped us out with it.

For me, my end goal is to have my own charity. It’s so hard because health and education are both super important. If you don’t educate people, then they won’t know about how to help other people. There are people that help out with health. Other people need homes to be built and yeah, there are so many different things so I’m still kind of figuring out what I want do. And also, I need money to help out where I can and also to put it back with what I want do in the future.

Be sure to catch all of Lauren’s cover stories and videos only on Calyxta.com! Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube @calyxtabeauty.

Text by: GRETCHEN GATAN
Videographer: ANDREW APUYA
Photographer: AYA CABAUTAN
Makeup: SYLVINA LOPEZ
Hair: MONG AMADO
Fashion Styling: ROSENTHAL TEE
Special thanks to: RONAC ART CENTER