Vanessa Hudgens Has Thoughts About Wedding Beauty Prep

Vanessa Hudgens met her fiancé, Major League Baseball player Cole Tucker, during a group meditation on Zoom. After spotting Tucker in his virtual Zoom box, Hudgens shot her shot by sliding into his DMs. Now, she's in the process of planning their wedding. "It's really hard," Hudgens confesses when asked how it's going. 

She's busy as it is. Prior to her engagement, Hudgens had taken on what she calls a rather "daunting" project: rebranding and reformulating Know Beauty, the skin-care label she and Madison Beer co-founded in 2021. "Madison [has] a lot on her plate — doing music, writing her memoir — so she told me to go for it," Hudgens explains. Now, she's leading the creative direction of the label. Know Beauty's original concept was DNA skin care. "Unfortunately it didn't really hit the way that we thought it would," says Hudgens. "About a year in, we took a hard look at our company and had to pivot."

Here, Hudgens talks about the brand’s new direction, her must-have beauty products (including a new clay mask she created for Know Beauty), her favorite kind of nail art, and her refreshing approach to bridal beauty prep.

In pivoting the direction of Know Beauty, Hudgens decided to scratch the original concept completely and formulate one single standout product: a clay mask. 

"I have oily, problematic skin; I struggled with acne for most of my life," says Hudgens. "I'm always looking for something that I can throw into my skin-care regime that'll help out. Clay masks have always been something I've been interested in.” Hudgens explains that the clay in the mask is "harvested from an active glacier,” which excites her: “I'm a big nature girl. I love a holistic approach. I love looking to Mother Nature for her remedies." The mask also includes sea kelp and lactic acid to even out skin tone without drying out the skin, which was a common clay-mask problem Hudgens was trying to correct for. 

"I use it almost every day," Hudgens says of the Know Beauty Glacial Bay Clay Mask. "I put it on my skin first thing [in the morning]. Then I brush my teeth, look at my phone, and hop into the shower to rinse it off. I also cleanse, tone, and use serum, then I love a moisturizer and sunscreen put together. I recently found this company, Ilia, that makes a tinted moisturizer with hyaluronic acid and sunscreen. I love things that make life easy."

In addition to Ilia's tinted sunscreen, Hudgens has a few other makeup go-tos, including the stronghold Refy Brow Gel ("I've got thick eyebrows, so I need something that's going to hold them in place") and the Freck Pen ("It's such a great way to cover up a pimple and make it into a beauty mark"). For lips, it has to be a long-wearing, non-transferable formula; Hudgens opts for liquid lipstick by Makeup Forever.

Hudgens calls her nails "the least low-maintenance thing ever." For her hard gels, she sees L.A.'s finest, Zola Ganzorigt, who also works with Hailey Bieber and sparked the "glazed donut" trend. 

"She got me on the pearlescent chrome and I've been obsessed with it ever since," says Hudgens of the pro. "I used to love doing crazy, outrageous nail art but the older I've gotten, the more I crave simplicity."

While Hudgens has beauty and skin-care experts at her fingertips and a lot of eyes on her nuptials, she says she won't be booking any Fraxel lasers, filler, or Botox appointments ahead of her wedding. "That's not really my vibe," she explains. "Not a lot beauty-wise will change for me between now and then." It's both a philosophy and aesthetic. "Natural beauty is where it's at," Hudgens says, "and I feel like the love of your life accepts you and loves you for who you are, so why would you want to change it?"

Instead of stressing, Hudgens says she's asking for help. "Originally I was like, I'm just going to do it myself," she says. "Then as the months went on and I realized nothing had been done, I was like, Okay, I need some help." When the overwhelming moments come (as they do), she leans into her spiritual practice. "If I'm super stressed, I'll try to take a minute to zen out," Hudgens says. “I really love breath work. I have a YouTube video saved where there are drumbeat sounds to connect to your breath. When we get stressed, we forget to breathe, even though it's the simplest thing ever."