Poppy Delevingne: ‘I used to be quite lazy with my style – now I want to dress like a disco ball’
You don’t need to spend long in the company of Poppy Delevigne to know that she’d be an excellent party guest. Although we meet over Zoom, it’s clear she’s a pro at putting others at ease, full of warmth and animated conversation, glimpses of the bright pink bell sleeves of her Zoe Jordan jumper coming into frame as she gesticulates while she speaks.
It’s not surprising, of course - as a model (and older sister of fellow model Cara Delevingne), actress and society personality, she’s been invited to a fair few parties. It would be easy to become a bit jaded by over a decade and a half of fashion launches and awards dos - and to a minor extent, before the pandemic, Poppy was. This Christmas though, after two years of lockdowns and social distancing, she is excited to start dressing up again.
“I feel that maybe over the years before, I’d become quite lazy with my style and makeup,” she admits. “I took it for granted. Now, after everything that's happened, I'm all about seizing the moment and wearing a bonkers dress that makes me look like a human disco ball and high heels that make me touch the ceiling and glitter eyeshadow and lipstick and really, really going for it.”
We saw evidence of this last Monday night when she attended the Fashion Awards in an ethereal mint green caped Giorgio Armani jumpsuit she describes as “a bit of a moment”. With dark eye makeup and her hair tonged into a cloud of blonde curls, the look had a Seventies feel to it, and that’s no accident: Poppy is currently filming a movie (The Chelsea Cowboy, about the life of actor John Bindon) set in the Sixties and Seventies. “It's given me inspiration,” she says. “In my mind, I’m channelling the days of Studio 54, Sharon Stone and Casino, Bianca Jagger…”
There are two essential ingredients to Poppy’s party look; the elements that not only look good, but they make her feel party-ready too: “When you're a little tired and it's been a long day, a bright, strong lipstick always gets me into the mood,” she says. Her go-to is Charlotte Tilbury’s ‘Electric Poppy’, a bold fuchsia which was named after her. “There's always a pair of heels as well,” she adds. “I have a black pair of Jimmy Choo platforms that have little crystal signs and moons and stars.” Critically, they are comfortable too, which means she can stay on the dance floor longer when she wears them.
As it turns out, Poppy’s a rather good party host too, and it’s this facet of her personality that was the draw for luxe premade cocktail company Batch & Bottle, which has appointed her as its newest ambassador. The partnership is, she says, “a match made in heaven.”
“I love to be the hostess,” she says. “I'm one of those hostesses who wants to be able to concentrate on my guests but what generally happens is I'm running around and taking someone's coat, and then I’m making them a drink, and I want to make them a proper cocktail, getting the ice and cutting up the the garnishes and the limes or whatever it may be and doing the right pours… You spend most of your time running about the kitchen and not really focusing on seeing and reconnecting with your friends.”
She has enjoyed the essential research this job has entailed, too: “I do know each cocktail pretty damn well,” she says. “I'm very into the Lazy Old Fashioned.”
Once the drinks are covered, Poppy’s secrets to a great party start with great people, “the more the merrier.” As for music, she’ll create a playlist in advance: “The last thing you want is people playing DJ warrior,” she says. “Because I'm in that disco mood, [I’ll include] anything by Sister Sledge or Prince or BeeGees or Donna Summer.”
Mood lighting is important too, “I'm not mad about having a room that's too bright, so I always love to have lots of lamps and fairy lights dotted around, as well as an abundance of candles, scented candles everywhere - I love those wintery, smoky ones like Diptyque’s Feu de Bois.” Not that it should all be too sophisticated - especially at Christmas: “I saw on Instagram the other day that someone had decorated their whole loo in tinsel door hangings and thinking I quite want to do that…”
So what does a Delevingne family Christmas look like? Will Poppy be applying her party dressing rules to lunch on the 25th too? Not so much. “I probably won't wear anything fabulous or sparkly, no platforms. It will probably be Cara’s animal onesies. Somehow I always end up with the raccoon, which is so frustrating because she’ll get something way more interesting like the piglet. We usually end up wearing the same onesies for days on end.”
The closest she got to dressing up for Christmas was a couple of years ago, having raided her grandmother’s wardrobe not long before. “She had this black dress she hadn’t worn for so long, I can't remember the designer, it was very 80s. I said, ‘can I have this,’ and she said, ‘of course you can.’ I just hacked off the bottom and made it into a tiny mini dress, and I surprised her [by wearing it] on Christmas day. I loved that moment of wearing something that always reminded her of Christmas and I just put my Poppy edge on it - which means just covering my thighs - not my grandmother's tastes at all, but I think secretly she was quite proud.”
Fashion heirlooms and animal onesies aside, the Delevingnes are hoping for a proper family Christmas this year. “I haven't seen some of my family for a while, at least not as much as I would like to see them,” she says. “For us all to be able to get together will just be magical. When you're with your family, you can really just be yourself. That’s the best feeling of all.”
