Celebrity Style Magazine: A Model Recommends: how to get Grace Kelly's red lip look

As the cinematic world celebrates Grace Kelly, we in beauty wanted to mark the late princess and Oscar-winning actress's beauty legacy too. So we asked Ruth Crilly, aka A Model Recommends, to recreate her iconic red lip look.

In town for the Cannes Film Festival, Crilly asked Dior international make-up artist Jamie Coombes to recreate the look on her, focusing specifically on Kelly's iconic fresh, red, lip.

Grace Kelly, with her Oscar for The Country Girl in 1955, wearing a powder blue dress created by Edith Head and her iconic red lip. Photo: Rex

"It wasn't like a classic red lip really," says Crilly. It was in fact, as Coombes confirms, a "soft, delicate, very sophisticated look." And that he says is all down to preparation, which starts with a lip conditioner, "just to really help smooth the lip surface."

Coombes applying balm to Crilly's lips.

Press it on, and blot off any excess with a tissue before applying an 'invisible' liner over the entire lip. "I don't want that classic red look where it's quite defined, I just want to keep it quite soft," says Coombes - and more than anything an invisible liner really does hold on to any pigment in the lipstick.

SEE: Grace Kelly's style in pictures

Unlike that classic red lip look which as Crilly admits, "is very high maintenance," the balm and liner application underlay also make any red stick that goes on over the top that much more even, and that much more long-lasting.

Step two; invisible liner to prep the lip and hold onto pigment.

Before any colour goes on, first use a highlighting powder, "on the cupids bow, just on top," explains Coombes. We in fact have two lip lines, one where the pigment finishes, and a faint white line above the lip which Coombes exaggerates with powder to make lips pop. He then places a little more on the outer corners, "to give that lovely lift," he says.

READ - That beauty moment: Grace Kelly in Rear Window, 1954

Coombes uses his ring finger to apply "just the right amount," of red to the Crilly's lips.

Lipstick time. Use your ring finger to apply colour from the bullet onto the lip, "pumping it into the lip," says Coombes. "It kind of stains the lips a little bit, so you don't get the full power of the lipstick, you just get this very delicate, more sophisticated look, but you're still getting that colour at the same time, which is so Grace Kelly."

Using fingers means the colour won't feel loaded up, and that you have just the right amount of finish, but, as Coombes advises, you might want to tidy up the edges, which he does using a lip brush, "just to join it all together."

"Rouge Dior was one of her favourite lipsticks," says Coombes, which is why he chose the classic 999 shade - one of the original colours - to recreate the look. "I do like a coral, but when you're going for that very chic look, this is kind of more appropriate," agrees Crilly. "Gorgeous."

Follow Coombes lead and join the edges by using a lip brush.