Garance Doré: Why Food Is the Ultimate Beauty Essential
The key to a happy and healthy life is happy food.
The Deligram is an ode to the artisanal food and beverage makers of New York. But with our new format comes an expansion of our borders, to speak not only to those local artisans, but also our friends, who consume those ingredients and orbit our world. This week, food-obsessed OG French cool girl and former New York resident Garance Doré, who recently launched an eponymous beauty brand, is our subject. Here, she shares the makers, restaurants and products she can’t live without.
There was always in my work this idea of essentials, classic and everlasting style, and I had this attitude towards beauty as well. I like things that work and that I can always come back to. Whatever the field—be it in design, in food, in fashion, in beauty, these are the types of products that are magical and take the most amount of work behind the scenes to come into the world as perfect as possible. They’re not too showy but they do fantastic work—we wanted that with Doré. We wanted to bring modernity to the classics of French Pharmacy, through our work on formulations and our commitment to safety and the environment.
They’re one and the same. I think that the key to a happy and healthy life is happy food—and the key to beauty is happiness and health. Whether it be because of the enjoyment and the sense of connection that food brings, or the fundamental element of health that stems from good nutrition. But my approach to it is very similar to the one I have with Doré. Simplicity is always my favorite. My favorite dish is a soft boiled egg with bread and butter. It’s all about the ingredients and the attention given to the moment.
Does water count? I love water. I love the energy carried by an orange. How about a delicious cucumber with just a little bit of sea salt? I think all food can be wonderful for your aura and your beauty. Even the less obvious ones. I love the sense of awe and respect linked to eating meat. I love the history and sense of family that comes from sharing a plate of pasta. I love the happiness on someone’s face when they’re eating a delicious sorbet. My grandmother and my father were chefs and everyone cooks in my family so food is an endless source of inspiration, emotion and joy.
My grandmother was the absolute typical Italian mamma–voluptuous, authoritative and endlessly loving. She created the most famous restaurant in Corsica, called Da Mamma. I never knew the place because I was little when she closed it to retire, but I knew all the flavors as she kept cooking them in her small kitchen. Of course, as a kid the one thing you always remember is lasagna. She passed on most of her recipes to my father, who became a very well-known restaurateur himself. He was a fantastic chef and often would send me into nature to go get him wild herbs in the maquis (the Corsican bush). (To this day wild mint is the most beautiful scent to me.) He taught me to be culinarily curious.
My grandmother on my mother’s side came from the mountains of the North of Morocco—her cooking was traditional and passionate. My grandma was Muslim, and for the Eid—the family would slaughter a sheep, and then eat it. I was young, but I remember sitting with my grandmother and all the other women and cleaning the guts of the animal thoroughly, then making little knots with them. It would take forever and there was laughter and songs and tears. It was a beautiful moment of sharing around food preparation that made me understand a lot of the connection with what we eat. After hours of cooking I remember it being the most glorious food ever. I am very, very attached to traditions because of this early contact with food and hunting and fishing and gardening and seeing the food grow.
I love Richard Christiansen’s Flamingo Estate—all their products are quite fabulous. And I absolutely adore this jam maker, London Borough of Jam. My favorite is Damson and Black Pepper! Also, I love canistrelli from Corsica.
I adore the work of the chef Douglas McMaster at Silo in London. The food is all sourced locally and the menu is absolutely to die for. I don’t love gimmicks unless they’re met with such zest, talent and perfectionism. In NYC, I used to live right above Veniero’s. I lived six years in New York City before discovering this!!! I absolutely love everything about it, it transports me to another time in history. It’s not “designed to look authentic” as a lot of restaurants are today. It’s really been there since 1894. And YES, sure, the cheesecake is insane. But their biscottis are also incredible. I’ll finish with just a little favorite of mine—there are so many in NYC, but I am talking about those which marked my life there. La Esquina. When you’re French, you have no knowledge about Mexican food. Or like, a really terrible one. I discovered fish tacos at La Esquina, and Margaritas, which are now my one drink of choice. I used to go there with a friend or two, early to avoid the crowds (my advice to dining in NYC: go at 5pm!!!) and get slightly drunk and endlessly happy.
Oooooooooh. It would be all the food my family made. So my grandmother’s taboulé (she was Moroccan and would spend the whole day passing the grains through her fingers for it to be the perfect size and texture), my father’s beignet de courgette (his signature dish at his restaurant, people would come from all across Corsica for them!), my grandmother’s lasagna (she was Italian and spent her life in the kitchen, no need to say more!), my mother’s anything (she’s more of a daily cook, nothing fancy but everything she creates is absolutely delicious), and my sister’s polenta (a Corsican dish).... I could go on forever!!!
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.