Of course, Philips doesn’t just paint faces. In March 2014, he was appointed creative and image director of Christian Dior Makeup, heading up the brand’s billion-dollar global beauty division, working on product development as well as the make-up looks for campaigns and catwalk shows. ‘When I joined, it was already a well-run machine,’ he says. ‘The innovation in technology is incredible. It’s my job to push things creatively.’ He has a track record in this, of course, spending between 2008 and 2013 as creative director of Chanel Makeup, generating waiting lists around the world with smash hits such as pearl-and-lace temporary tattoos, the glittering Illusion d’Ombre eyeshadows and Le Vernis in startling shades like Jade and Particulière (a dark taupe), turning nail polish into a fashion accessory as desirable as a chain-strap handbag. If anyone could be said to have redefined the art of make-up over the past decade, changing the very way we think about beauty, it’s him. ‘I’m not predicting the future,’ he says. ‘I don’t try to make fashionable collections. What I always say is that women don’t necessarily want to look fashionable, but they always want to look beautiful. That’s what I have in mind when I create.’

This autumn sees Philips’ first full make-up collection for Dior land in stores around the world, titled Cosmopolite and promising – rather excitingly – to be ‘a manifesto of freedom for each and every woman’. He used two of the eye palettes for Dior’s A/W 15 catwalk show – metallic shadows in shades of khaki, magenta, silver and sapphire, applied to match designer Raf Simons’ mutated animal prints. The make-up looks seen on these pages, from the ethereal A/W 15 Haute Couture show, which took place in July, use one star product from the same collection – the Backstage Pro Fix It 2-in-1 Prime & Conceal stick – for a completely different kind of beauty that he describes as ‘pure, natural and minimalist’. It might appear deceptively simple, but this is not the case: ‘To do simply pretty make-up is often harder than doing spectacular make-up,’ he says. ‘It’s more refined. It’s more delicate. It takes more craft.’ It’s this diversity – from dramatic, daring statements to perfectly executed classicism, delivered with an intuitive and collaborative understanding – that makes Philips such a master of his art. It’s almost unbelievable to learn that he never wanted to do it at all.

‘Before I was 26, I’d never touched a make-up brush,’ he says. ‘I didn’t even know it was something you could do for a living.’ After studying graphic design in Brussels, Philips enrolled on the prestigious Académie des Beaux-Arts fashion design course in his hometown of Antwerp. Fellow students included the photographer Willy Vanderperre and the stylist Olivier Rizzo, still close friends, with whom he now works on Dior campaigns. While helping Belgian designers backstage at Paris Fashion Week shows, he became intrigued by the hair and make-up transformations and decided to change career track. Not daunted by a lack of technical expertise, he developed a radical inventiveness as com-pensation. ‘All the extreme things that I did were just a way to cover up the fact that I wasn’t capable of anything else,’ he says, only half joking. His early collaborators – equally imaginative – included Raf Simons, a furniture designer who had just made the move into menswear. ‘We were so young and new, and we didn’t really know just how far we were pushing things.’

Now, of course, Raf Simons is the other creative director at Dior, working on a different floor at the Avenue Montaigne headquarters. Although beauty collections happen on a different time scale to fashion (when we meet, Philips is working on Christmas 2016), the pair come together for the ready-to-wear, cruise and couture shows. ‘I don’t create from a fashion point of view,’ he says. ‘At Dior, I do my thing, Raf does his thing, and at least six times a year, we cross over. The fact that I’ve known Raf so long doesn’t mean he doesn’t still surprise me over and over again. He’s got a very particular view on things. But I always know with Raf that it’s going to look great. It’s going to look conceptual, almost like an art performance.’

Though the adrenaline thrill of a fashion show still energises him, the thing that excites Philips most now is his new collaboration with the people who turn his creative ideas into actual products. ‘Going into the lab is like stepping into the future,’ he says, talking enthusiastically about the chemists, marketing teams and packaging designers who interpret his vision. ‘At the beginning of my career, I was driven by fashion. But when I started to create products, my motivation became beauty and what the real woman needs and wants. I get more satisfaction now out of being able to create a foundation line that covers a whole range of shades – that I know a woman will feel good about – than I do in creating a fantastic visual which looks great for a month in a magazine. You know, I’ve done that. I still do it – but this is more challenging.’Read more at:princess prom dresses uk | http://www.marieprom.co.uk/mermaid-trumpet-prom-dresses