As the holiday season approaches and Los Angeles weather slowly but surely nears legitimate fall temperatures, the bevy of parties and dinners across the city are becoming increasingly festive, with touches of warmth and coziness. Such was the case for a dinner hosted by Relevant Beauty on Tuesday evening to celebrate the skin-care brand’s first foray into makeup. Picture an intimate setting of three candle-lit tables, each draped in a very fall orange, a comfort-food menu, and a roundup of notable attendees, all set in what one guest joked was “the fanciest driveway we’d had dinner in” (Lionel Richie’s to be exact), and hosted by Relevant founder Nyakio Grieco and brand ambassador Nicole Richie.
“We originally met because our kids went to the same preschool a million years ago,” Grieco tells Vogue about how their partnership eventually came to be. “We didn’t know each other well [at first], but had so many amazing mutual friends, including [Richie’s makeup artist] Beau Nelson, who I collaborated with on developing these formulas.” In Grieco’s words, having Richie on board was something she manifested, a concept the pair share a love for. “I’ll be honest, it was an immediate ‘yes’ for me,” Richie chimed in. “We were talking about our mutual love for energy and crystals (a decorative detail poignant to the Thirteen Lune flagship store on Larchmont, Grieco’s beauty retailer from which Relevant helms as its in-house brand), and everything was just in sync.”
Launched mid-pandemic, Relevant came about as a response to the lack of clean beauty products Grieco found marketed to melanated skin, developing a line that could put black chemists at the head of the formulation process from day one. Now moving into makeup, launching first with an array of tints for the lips and cheek (Richie wore the shade Tangerine for the occasion) and lip gloss, Grieco keeps her skin-care roots front and center, infusing the makeup with skin-benefiting ingredients such as Vitamin E, peptides, and castor oil.
With guests such as Sofia Richie, Rachel Zoe, Molly Simms, Kelly Sawyer, Hillary Kerr, and Lauren London in attendance, dinner was served family-style with a lineup from My 2 Cents that rivaled most holiday dinners, including seafood gumbo, ribeye steak, macaroni and cheese, and banana pudding, to name only a sliver of the offerings. Handpicked by Richie, the food was, for her, one of the most important details of the night. “I said to my friends, ‘Don’t come wearing cream and being delicate—we are eating,’” Richie told Vogue. “We’re going to laugh, we’re going to have a good time, which I think is very much in line with Relevant Beauty—it’s all about vibes, and having a good time and celebrating us as individuals.”