She may find it strange, but that doesn’t keep her from being very good at it. Her playful and adventurous sense of style has made Lucy someone red-carpet watchers look forward to seeing.
She works with stylist Leith Clark and make-up artist Jo Baker to ensure she never appears in anything short of a major look. In September, she wore a deep-V-neck black Chanel jumpsuit and a dramatic, ’60s-inspired cat-eye to the premiere of No Time To Die, in which Rami played the villain, Safin.
‘I used to be really scared of it, the fashion industry is quite daunting. But Leith does it in a way where it feels like an expression of you and an enhancement of who you want to be in that environment,’ Lucy says.
‘She’s freed me from feeling anxious about getting it right, ever. You’re always gonna get it right if you feel good. That’s all that it is. If you loved it at the time, you can’t regret it.’
Looks she’s loved include the harlequin Christian Dior gown and spiky lashes she wore to the premiere of The Politician in 2019, and the perfect little striped shift dress she wore to Chanel’s Métiers d’art show in December. ‘That’s kind of my favourite shape, where you feel really free and mobile, but chic. Chanel do it right.’
Off the red carpet, she’s most likely to be found in jeans and a T-shirt, or a striped polo-neck, like the one she’s wearing today. The blue quilted handbag and double-C logo boots add a decidedly more luxurious note to her outfit (she’s worked with Chanel and is the face of Chloé’s first all-natural perfume).
‘I’m tremendously lucky to be carrying that around,’ she says, stroking the bag. ‘I recently heard Nicola Coughlan [from Bridgerton] say that if you have a nice bag, it doesn’t matter about the rest of the outfit. I love that. I really believe that you can have the right bag and then wear jeans and a T-shirt and feel put together.’
After the Stella interview, she’s off to record more audio for Ipcress. She’s looking forward to revisiting the project – ‘One of my favourite experiences of my career, ever.’
The cast and crew spent five months shooting in Liverpool in early 2021 before going to Croatia. Filming under lockdown conditions bred unity. ‘The whole cast and crew became really close,’ she says, then declines to show me the Ipcress WhatsApp group.
She’s full of praise for her castmates. Tom Hollander was ‘electric – everyone picked up that energy from him’. Once, filming an elaborate shoot-out in Croatia, ‘Tom was getting so carried away the director kept saying, “Tom, you don’t have to do your own sound effects for the machine gun.” It was brilliant.’
