Chanel Ayan Takes PEOPLE Inside the First ‘Real Housewives of Dubai’ Reunion: See All the BTS Glam!

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The Perfect Dress

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CHANEL AYAN: For me, the entire look starts with the dress. Obviously because it’s my first reunion and everyone knows me for my fabulous fashions, I needed a real fabulous gown. I’m lucky because as a model, I get paid to wear dresses and I have all the biggest designer houses in the world at my fingertips. I know every single person. So it wasn’t hard to have options to wear, and this ended up being my favorite of all of them.

Michael Cinco designed it, he’s a very famous designer. I’ve modeled for him for like, 18 years. He dresses stars like Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, and JLo — who is one of his favorite clients. This same dress, I had seen someone wear it to some awards show and I really liked how it looked on her [Editor’s note: Singer-songwriter Gloria Trevi wore it to the 2021 Latin Grammy Awards]. So I ended up going to try it and then I loved it.

I had almost 20 designers approaching me to dress me for the reunion. Valentino wanted to dress me, so many designers wanted to dress me because they knew it was a big moment for me. But I went with this dress because it just looked good and I felt good in it. It was like, beauty queen. I wanted to look beautiful and just gorgeous.

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Ruffling Your Feathers

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My favorite part of the dress was the ruffles. They were so big and beautiful, just like my personality. And I knew they would make everyone gag.

The dress was also happy, like me. I came in that morning very excited, you know, smiling and light. It was 6 a.m. and I only slept like, three hours because me and [Real Housewives of Dubai costar Lesa Milan] were out partying the night before. So I went in a good mood. And all day, I feel like Jesus took over my body, more than the devil. The other girls may have gotten visits from the devil, but I stayed happy.

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Keep It Simple

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TONI MALT (Makeup Artist): I’ve known Ayan for 15 years, and our relationship is just the most wonderful thing I can imagine.

CHANEL AYAN: It wasn’t when we first met. The first time she met me she was like, “Oh she doesn’t stop talking, she doesn’t shut up.” Now we just became really good friends.

TONI MALT: Ayan’s motto has always been “the more the better” which is why I love working with her, because I love color and I love big statements. She gives me all the freedom in the world. She never interferes anymore, which she did in the beginning but she never does nowadays. Just complete trust. As long as it’s loud, she’s happy. If it’s soft glam she’ll be like, “Toni, we’re not finished. Do more!”

CHANEL AYAN: I love going big, big, big, but for the reunion, I didn’t want my makeup to be a lot. I wanted to capture my real beauty; that was really important for me. So I knew that going in.

TONI MALK: The morning of the the reunion, we actually had no plan in mind for makeup. We knew she had a fabulous dress and a very powerful dress, so when we looked at it that day, we realized it was so good already that we didn’t want to add too much to it. And you’d think that would be easy, but there’s a lot of pressure when the dress is good. Very beautiful haute couture dresses, they’re difficult to do makeup for because you need to pair back to let the dress stand out.

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A Taste of Ayan Beauty

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CHANEL AYAN: I wanted to focus on my face so you could see my makeup, because I’m coming out with a beauty line called Ayan Beauty. We’ve been working on it for six months, and I knew that’s all I’d be wearing for the reunion.

TONI MALT: Right now we’re in a phase where we’re testing so many products that have come back from the manufacturers, so that’s really exciting. Sometimes when you put on a lash that we’ve created, we literally have tears in our eyes because we’re so excited to soon be sharing that with the world. She’s so proud of it, and we’ve put so much thought into it. It’s been so much fun.

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Layers of the Line

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CHANEL AYAN: That was really important for me, to show off the line. But I didn’t want my makeup to be heavy so we didn’t go with a lot of makeup on the skin. I really just wanted to capture my beauty and show that my makeup line could actually make people look really pretty. I wanted to show it on my face, like, “Look what Ayan Beauty has in store for you guys!”

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Made Up in Makeup

Zach Dilgard/Bravo

TONI MALT: And so for the makeup, we kept the skin slightly glowing, not too contoured. And then of course, we put a little bit of glitter on the eyes and lots of black to make her eyes really stand out. Huge lashes, because the bigger the lash, the bigger the cheekbone, I always say. And then just lip gloss to pare it back a little bit so that we don’t lose Ayan in this whole creation.

The one thing we always, always do — whether it’s soft glam or full-on — is a completely black-rimmed eye. We bring in lots of black just around the lash line just to make the eyes stand out. That’s something we always, always do.

CHANEL AYAN: I loved those earrings, and how Toni matched the color to it.

TONI MALT: Yes, Ayan had these huge, golden, yellow, bronzy earrings and that’s the same color we have on the eye-makeup, the eye lid.

CHANEL AYAN: You know, I lost an earring after the reunion, which I’m not happy about. It was so beautiful and now it’s completely gone. If you find it, please give it back!

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A Match Made in Hair-and-Makeup Heaven

Zach Dilgard/Bravo

TONI MALT: I always work very closely with the hairstylist, we really talk about what both of us are going to do. If the hair is vey flamboyant, I will pull back a little bit and understate the makeup because if both are strong, it becomes a little bit of a theater production and then we lose Ayan a little bit in that. In this case, we worked with an incredible hairstylist.

JANEL SEALY SMITH (Hairstylist): This was my first time working with Toni, her makeup artist, but we worked so well together. Hair and makeup, I can’t tread on her makeup and she can’t touch my hair. So she gave me the time and space I needed.

TONI MALT: Janel created something absolutely magnificent. I’ve never seen anything like it before.

JANEL SEALY SMITH: Ayan is a showstopper so she definitely was looking for something that would be exactly that. And because she’s a supermodel, I knew I could do something a little risqué. That’s why I chose to do that design.

CHANEL AYAN: Like my makeup, I wanted to keep my hair simple — I didn’t want to do big hair.

JANEL SEALY SMITH: I did Ayan’s hair for Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen and we did huge, big hair. So she came to the reunion that morning wanting to do big hair, and I said to her, “Please, let’s not repeat. Let’s do something more innovated, something new.” And she said, “You know what, Janel, I’m leaving it in your hands.” She just knew I would take it up a notch.

CHANEL AYAN: My dress had all these crystals so I said, “I want my head crystalized too.” Just crystals all around my face.

JANEL SEALY SMITH: I put in around 70 Swarovski crystals to embellish her hair. It took time, but not a long time. I used göt2b gel to hold all of the gems, instead of using glue. Gel protects you from damaging the hair. Ayan is not a professional with hair extensions or wigs, so I wanted her to be able to use the hair I gave her again.

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A Boarder of Curls

Zach Dilgard/Bravo

TONI MALT: My favorite part of the hair was the twists and the baby hair around her face.

JANEL SEALY SMITH: That’s a technique that I call hairline sculpting. I basically made swirls and curls using gel to create a design, almost like a pattern, right around her hairline and a little on the back of her head. It’s all done by hand. I don’t know how long it took her to take it out, cause she went home with it!

CHANEL AYAN: There were so many crystals, I sparkled! It took so long to get them out. I may still find one in my hair, I don’t know.

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Hair for Days

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JANEL SEALY SMITH: And then I gave her a low, long ponytail. That hair was virgin human hair from a company called True Indian Hair. They love Ayan so they were willing to give me whatever hair I needed for her, because her synthetic wigs she wore on the show were not working.

CHANEL AYAN: Oh my wigs were so, so bad. Nobody told me how bad they were.

JANEL SEALY SMITH: The first day I met her she said, “Darling, I was wearing tens of thousands of dollars on my clothes, but my hair was $10.” So we stepped it up. Her hair for the reunion cost a little more than $1,000.

CHANEL AYAN: It was so much better. I have definitely learned from my mistakes.

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Shantay, You Stay (in Place)

Zach Dilgard/Bravo

JANEL SEALY SMITH: To hold everything in place, I used the Freeze hairspray from Jass Products. It definitely didn’t move after that. And then, it was important to take care of her hair underneath so I used a leave-in treatment from Jass Products also.

TONI MALT: The whole look — fashion, makeup, hair — it’s all one, and that look needs to be cohesive. If it’s not, something looks off. And we definitely nailed it.

JANEL SEALY SMITH: I was supposed to work with Ayan in February. They were going to fly me to Dubai, but something happened, schedules got changed and it didn’t happen. Now she’s like, “I don’t want nobody else.” And I’m grateful for that because I’ve been a hairstylist now for 30 years, and it still feels like 30 days young because I’m bubbling with ideas for Chanel Ayan. I want to see her bald so bad, and I want to add strands of hair and sculpt her. I just can’t wait to show off so many more looks on her. She exemplifies excellence so the honor I have to shine her crown, please, give me the opportunity — I’ll put rubies everywhere.

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A Look That Lasts

Zach Dilgard/Bravo

TONI MALT: The one thing we weren’t worried about was Ayan melting under the bright lights. You know, when you work in the heat of the Middle East, and it’s 104° F all day, the studio is nothing. We we work with a lot of creams — like cream makeup foundations that really stick to the skin and don’t move so much. Liquid foundations will move a lot during the day if they’re not set properly or if it’s too hot under the lights. Whereas, a thick cream foundations, they really stay in place. And then we set afterwards with a lot of lot of fixing spray, and then dry that off with little fans. I think that’s sort of our secret to making her skin last. Oh, and loads and loads of moisturizer. We spend about 10 minutes in the morning moisturizing the skin, eye cream, oils for the skin so that the makeup that doesn’t dry out the skin or doesn’t crack.

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Head to Toe Sparkle

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CHANEL AYAN: I had to choose between silver and gold for my shoes. I thought if I did all gold, it would match my earrings and my dress too much, so I went with a silver shoe with gold accents on it.

There were crystals on my shoes, too. I’m telling you, I had crystals everywhere. My underwear was crystalized, my vagina was crystalized — everything was just crystals, crystals, crystals everywhere. I wanted to be like a shining star, like a star in the sky.

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Real Regrets

Zach Dilgard/Bravo

TONI MALT: She was definitely best dressed, for sure.

JANEL SEALY SMITH: A league of her own!

CHANEL AYAN: Looking back, I really loved my entire look, I just wish I knew where I was sitting on the reunion couch before I picked my dress because I didn’t realize that my train was going to take up the whole darn stage! They sat me next to Andy Cohen, where everyone always wants to sit, but I didn’t care about sitting next to him — I would have rather sat down at the end because my ruffles were too big to be hidden! Sitting next to him, I couldn’t show off my legs, my shoes… I mean, my ruffles were so big, they took up Andy’s shoes! So I would have loved to show off my look more. Because I’m always going to be the moment, no matter where I am sitting.

The Real Housewives of Dubai reunion kicks off Aug. 31 (9 p.m. ET) on Bravo.