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"  Photo: Solange Knowles Solange Knowles walked last night&amp;#039;s MTV Music Video Awards red carpet wearing a glimmering midnight blue suit by H&amp;amp;amp;M Collection. It&amp;#039;s the sort of ensemble that earns the New Orleans resident &amp;quot;coolest girl in the room&amp;quot; at any party. &amp;quot;I knew that I wanted to be super comfortable and I wanted something understated and chic,&amp;quot; Knowles says. &amp;quot;Going with a tux always feels like that falls into that description.&amp;quot; Knowles&amp;#039; unique brand of beauty expression and freedom\u2014without fussiness\u2014echoed the same sentiment. &amp;quot;I exhausted myself with nail art five or six years ago,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;I had American flags, sushi, all kinds of crazy stuff and then I outgrew it. It takes so much time and patience.&amp;quot; Instead, for the VMAs the singer went with glossy navy nails to offset her suit. After the show wrapped, Solange called ELLE.com to talk about red carpet nerves, raiding her mother&amp;#039;s medicine cabinet, and why coconut oil is wavy hair&amp;#039;s best friend. You look so beautiful tonight! How did the makeup come together? I&amp;#039;ve been wearing red eyeliner and red eyeshadow so the only thing I hadn&amp;#039;t tried was red mascara. I don&amp;#039;t know what&amp;#039;s been attracting me to red. I think it gives such a unique edge. My makeup artist, Miguel, actually made it. Originally, we had thought that we would use red mascara, but we wanted the density of a full black lash so we did black and painted the ends of the lash with a heavy red pigment. It&amp;#039;s always challenging to translate an editorial look to the red carpet.  Photo: Solange Knowles Is there one of your past beauty looks that made you feel the most beautiful or the coolest? For one of the first shots I did for my last album, I did a yellow cream eyeshadow and a yellow lip. Usually I would say one or the other, but for some reason that really worked. I&amp;#039;ve always been drawn to doing color accents. Six years ago I went through a phase of wearing green or blue lipstick every day. The yellow is my favorite though. It just works with my skin. Make Up For Ever makes really good creamy colors. Really, really opaque and pretty potent stuff. That&amp;#039;s what I use when I want to play with color. What songs do you listen to when you&amp;#039;re getting ready? I just shuffle my iPod, which can be majorly embarrassing, but today I listened to Womack &amp;amp;amp; Womack, &amp;quot;Baby I&amp;#039;m Scared of You&amp;quot; on repeat, like, four times. Walking the red carpet looks terrifying, but you must be used to it. I don&amp;#039;t think that you ever get used to it. It&amp;#039;s really a shit show out there and you feel so completely vulnerable and critiqued and you have to be on. I think one thing that&amp;#039;s really cool is artists are now able to go to their Instagram and ease some of those jitters by having their own moment to showcase the look.  Photo: Solange Knowles Do you keep any products on hand for touch-ups during the show? I&amp;#039;m not super married to products, and I&amp;#039;m terrible at touching up. Lately I&amp;#039;ve been really loving Mally\u2014she has an eyebrow gel that I love. If I had to pick one product, I have full eyebrows and I don&amp;#039;t like to shape them, so eyebrow gel is a go-to. You have the most beautiful, versatile hair and you really celebrate your natural texture. What&amp;#039;s your secret? I&amp;#039;m playing around with what I can do within my hair texture a little more. It&amp;#039;s always interesting on the red carpet because different lighting brings out different textures. In person, it can photograph differently. I&amp;#039;m loving bigger waves that are a little bit more glamorous. Any hair products that you can&amp;#039;t live without? Lately I&amp;#039;ve been really relying on coconut oil. I actually just go to the grocery store and buy organic coconut oil and put it on before, during, and after I shampoo. I let it air dry. Sometimes I blow it out with low heat. Sometimes I&amp;#039;ll twist it and take out the twists the next day.  Photo: CREDIT NAME Your skin always looks springy and glowing. What are a few favorite skincare products? Please don&amp;#039;t say just water! I&amp;#039;m super basic when it comes to my skincare. I just use Epicuren face products and moisturizer, but I stayed at my mom&amp;#039;s house this past weekend so I used her products. They&amp;#039;re super fancy so it was really fun. I used all of that today. When I pack products they spill everywhere! I try to stay with friends when I travel and I just use whatever they have. Related:  The Best Beauty From the MTV Video Music Awards  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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