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In the span of 15 years, Sunmi has lived dozens of lifetimes. All of them merge together the second the K-pop star takes the stage on the latest stop on her Good Girl Gone Mad tour. Tonight, Sunmi is in New York City at Terminal 5, a venue that packs 3,000 people into three levels. An hour before the show begins, we meet up backstage — in the male dancers' dressing room, to be specific — for a quick interview.
Sunmi sits across from me in a tan sequined spaghetti-strapped mini dress. For the night, she's popped in sky-blue colored contacts, which contrast her gilded brown smokey eyes adorned with tiny gold pearls. (Here are some similar ones if you want to recreate her makeup.) Her lips are topped with a matte dusty rose hue that doesn't budge as she sips hot tea. I'm guessing it's either Peripera's Ink the Velvet in Well-Made Nude or MAC's Powder Kiss Velvet Blur Slim Stick in Brickthrough. And Sunmi no longer has ultra-long, mermaid-like bright tangerine hair. For tour, she's dyed it dark chocolate. Tonight it blends into subtle ways that flow down her arms. "I've always thought New York was quite a chic city," Sunmi tells me of her inspiration for tonight's look. "So I tried to express that in my hair and makeup."
At first, I think of this ensemble as an outfit that Sunmi would wear in the pilot for a 2022 K-drama reboot of Sex and the City. She'd star as Carrie of course. However, as soon as Sunmi starts performing, I get more of a Chicago on Broadway vibe. Someone needs to get her a gig as Velma Kelly asap, if you ask me. After all, Sunmi easily flows between Korean and English throughout our interview.
But Sunmi's New York City-inspired look is only for now. After she performs a couple of songs, Sunmi will change into a frilly denim dress before switching that out for a black romper with a diamond chandelier-like design hanging from her chest and knee-high mesh stockings.
In two days, Sunmi will present fans, who she lovingly calls Miya-ne, in Toronto with a brand-new hair and makeup moment: low, crimped pigtails; matching matte rose lips and undereye blush, and smoky eyes with black rhinestones in the middle of her lower lashlines to match a red-and-silver sequined set.
Through my eyes, beauty seems ephemeral to Sunmi; something with endless possibilities to explore and even invent. But in her own words, "I look inside myself and take the emotions that I feel and express that into an image," Sunmi says. All of this is but a reflection of what she's experiencing at this very moment. As her emotions shift, her relationship with beauty finds new tessellations.
Earlier this summer, Sunmi captivated fans across the world with her summer hit "Heart Burn." Her look had a more whimsical vibe than tonight's aesthetic. "In the music video, I come across as almost a vampire," she shares. In theory, Sunmi does. Throughout it, she falls in love and kills lovers throughout space and time.
The thing is Sunmi doesn't present herself in a typical Elvira-like manner. Nothing about her interpretation of a vampire says Mistress of the Dark. "I thought it would be quite a fun look if a vampire had freckles," Sunmi reveals. The same sunny warmth was displayed in her orange hair, too, she adds. I was particularly a fan of the vibrant orange blush that spanned her cheeks to round out the monochromatic moment.
In the context of Sunmi's career, this twist on the vampire trope makes sense. Sunmi has an essence of immortality. She's K-pop's lovable ray of sunshine that cannot be dimmed for anything. In 2007, Sunmi first debuted in the industry as a member of Wonder Girls with the likes of HyunA and HA:TFELT. She lived out and encapsulated the ultimate Y2K beauty fantasy.
After a brief hiatus from music starting in 2010, she returned as a soloist in 2013 with "24 Hours," a song that hits just as hard in concert today as it did nearly a decade ago. Tonight, she'll even dance on stage with the same dancer that appeared in the song's music video, Cha Hyun Seung. Back then, Sunmi's hair was cut and dyed into a sleek ashy blonde bob, and her makeup was just starting to take a turn toward bold beauty experimentation.
Two years later, Sunmi returned to Wonder Girls alongside her replacement (exhibit 19284 of her immorality) as they embarked on a new phase as a full-fledged band in every sense of the word. They replaced choreography with instruments for their performances of "I Feel You." Sunmi strummed the bass guitar with copper hair in '80s updos and mod winged liner.
On stage, Sunmi will pay homage to this chapter of her musical career by reaching for a teal-colored bass guitar set up on the side of the stage. It takes her 2019 single "Noir" to impressive Y2K era pop-rock proportions. “Playing bass is a challenge I wanted to attempt,” Sunmi tells me backstage. "It's been quite a while since I played it, but the fans really wanted to see me play the bass again. It's really hard, though." She'll repeat this sentiment on stage for all to hear. Sunmi even tries to prove it by singing and playing without any other instrumentals backing her up. Instead of seeming arduous, it all comes off effortlessly. Sunmi is even losing her voice, but she still sounds just as crisp and captivating as she does on Spotify. All her apprehensions clearly melt away the second her songs start to play. Her quietness backstage switches into the sassy charisma of a truly Taurean performer. She even tells a male fan constantly yelling between songs to shut up.
When she gets back to her hotel room tonight, Sunmi will head right to bed. "You don't do any face masks or anything?" I ask, wondering if she has any self-care rituals on tour. "I'd rather spend my time sleeping instead," she returns. Even vampires need their beauty sleep after all.
Read more about the beauty of K-pop:
- Why Wonho Prefers to Keep His Beauty Routine Minimal
- Meet Lil Cherry, Korea's Newest Cool Girl
- K-Pop Group CRAVITY on Their Desert Island Beauty Essentials
Now, see the 10-minute beauty routine of Allure's September cover star, Quannah Chasinghorse in action:
