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Hunter Schafer seems to be everywhere lately: In TikTok feeds denouncing the Trump administration, looking stunning in a dapper Prada ensemble at the Met Gala, filming season three of HBO’s Euphoria and fronting for a number of fashion and beauty houses, including starring alongside Harris Dickinson and Damson Idris for Prada. The latest campaign to feature the actor/model/activist is for the house of Mugler and its newest fragrance in the Angel stable, Angel Stellar.
Schafer first fronted for Angel Elixir in 2023 and rejoins the fragrance family with its latest juice, Stellar. The trans activist says that the core Mugler Angel scent “feels really in line with what I try to build myself to be, which is what fragrance is about at the end of the day. It should feel like putting on a pair of heels or makeup. In a certain way it’s helping bring a radiant femininity from inwards to outwards and I’ve always felt that it works with me very well.”
She calls this latest iteration of the scent more “sophisticated” than the original with its “creamy, powdery pistachio, amber-y gourmand” elements that meld with “brighter notes of bergamot. It’s a beautiful recipe on something that I know and love very well.” Another fan of Angel? Her grandma. “She was very excited to hear that I was part of the Mugler Angel family because she wore it back in the day.” (The scent launched in 1992.)
Mugler Angel Stellar Eau de Parfum
For the campaign shoot (the resulting video can be seen here), Mugler tapped London-based pro Jordan Hemingway to direct. “He was really good at articulating the feelings we were trying to capture,” says Schafer of the three-day shoot in Barcelona. “That was my first time in Barcelona, which was so exciting. I’d been wanting to go for years.” She found herself back a couple months later to film Prime Video’s limited series Blade Runner: 2099, currently in production.
This self-proclaimed sci-fi geek, who starred in 2023’s The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, finds the collision of beauty and technology exciting.
“It’ll be interesting to watch how beauty morphs and responds to the normalization of augmented reality, which is already such a part of our lives in such a short amount of time. It’ll be interesting to watch how the beauty world responds to that.” In fact, augmented reality is already becoming an integral part of the beauty-buying landscape, in terms of trying makeup, hairstyles and hair colors virtually, having skin health analyzed to prescribe personalized recommendations and shade matching perfectly to a customer’s skin color.
So does her personal beauty veer toward a futuristic Hunger Games Panem Capitol-esque look? Not so much. Schafer, a spokesperson for Shiseido since 2022, tends to favor sleek hairstyles and pared-back makeup for public appearances. That includes her favorite red carpet look of recent years, the pink Prada gown and minimal makeup at the 2024 Golden Globe awards. She loved how the wind made her outfit float and the “simple, minimal beauty of that look as well.”
A longtime lover of fashion, Schafer uses clothing as a way to express herself. It’s why you won’t find her leaning into method dressing on the carpet, as her co-star and friend Zendaya has done so well. “It can feel too directly derived. We want there to be an interesting exchange or an interesting reflection, but not an exact replica,” she says.
Another form of self-expression is her art. In fact, it’s also her number one coping method when things get chaotic in her world, as they did when her new passport arrived earlier this year with an M for male on it. (Schafer transitioned to female at age 14, in 2013.) She took to social media to berate the Trump administration for its policy change to have identification issued with the gender the person was at birth.
At moments like this, does she reach for a calming scent, head for a bubble bath or light-scented candles? No. She leans into family and friends, “who make me feel grounded,” and her art. “I love drawing, illustrating, painting. I bring my sketchbook with me everywhere. That’s something I use to tie me down back to earth.”
