Miku Martineau Brings Canadian Glamour to Milan With Armani Beauty
From Netflix's Crew Girls to Giorgio Armani's front row, the budding Canadian actress makes her Milan debut.
Few things invigorate fashion quite like the arrival of a new talent. A fresh face can do far more than inspire a new wave of aspiration. When the right emerging figure enters the spotlight, they can redefine the cultural mood, challenge industry conventions, or introduce a perspective that reshapes the direction of trend cycles. Take Jacob Elordi, for example. He first started to come to Milan Fashion Week as a quietly emerging talent. He’s since become a front-row fixture and Bottega Veneta’s global brand ambassador.
A new crop of rising ingénues and breakout talents who also were out and about at Milan Fashion Week seem to be following in Elordi’s oversized footsteps. Names such as South Korea’s supercool Park Si-Woo and Brit screen stars Sam Claflin (of The Hunger Games series, Enola Holmes, and Daisy and the Six) and Bo Bragason (Sterling Point) all made early appearances in Italy’s style capital. Aside from that trio, Canada’s own Miku Martineau had a glittering MFW debut as a special guest of Giorgio Armani Beauty.
Born to a mother from Tokyo and a father of Québécois heritage, the star of Netflix’s Crew Girl brings a multicultural, multidimensional perspective to what she defines as “true modern glamour.”
“I think my concept of beauty is authenticity and individuality. I think it’s about feeling like yourself, because the more you feel connected to who you are, the more you shine,” she says. “Throughout the years, my understanding of who I am as a person was so important for my own growth.” Another factor in what she thinks is attractive comes directly from where she’s from. “It might be a stereotype that Canadians lead with kindness, but I think it is a true cliché, and to me, living that way is the greatest beauty.”
For her role as Teagan Tao in Crew Girl, Martineau plays an all-star athlete who has to keep proving herself as the coxswain (the person who sits at the front of a boat and acts as coach and director) for an all-male team. Between scenes where Martineau is screaming at paddlers with sculpted abs and maxed-out egos, her character rides the choppy waters of teenhood and identity. A romantic wrench is thrown into Teagan’s plans when two objects of desire—Josh Regis and Cam Dillinger (played by Samuel Braun and Kyle Clark)—catch her eye and heart.
Despite the messiness of the love triangle, Martineau says she and her Crew Girl character share a defining quality: an unrelenting drive to get to the next level. “Teagan is a young woman who’s in pursuit of something that she’s very passionate about, so that I can relate,” she says. “I’ve been pursuing acting since I was 13, and I’m in my 20s, so dedication and practice is part of my life.”
Her beauty ideals, she explains, are a work in progress and not stuck to one clear vision that, she notes, “expand from experience.” In Milan, this meant mingling with a new cross-section of cultures and collaborators. As soon as she landed in the thick of fashion week, Martineau worked with a full glam team of Armani Beauty experts. They spent hours choosing palettes consisting of Luminous Silk Foundation, blending Eye Tint eyeshadows for a golden glow, and topping it all off with a Rosewood Frost Prisma Glass Icy Lip Plumper. The maquillage complemented the dress she wore for her front-row intro: a sculptural maxi dress with an asymmetric hemline and horizontal and diagonal stripes, plucked from the new collection.
Yet what lures Martineau most is less about being close to an ideal and more about using beauty as a tool. “I learned makeup can be a performance enhancer,” she says. “I make certain choices with every character within their makeup palette so each [of their] signature looks is specific,” she says. “When I played Yukemo in [the live action version of the anime series] The Bet, we went with this manga-inspired bunch of shades. For Crew Girl, I keep a glowy, natural look.”
That idea of individuality also spills into her relationship with fashion. At the spring/summer Armani show, Martineau is immediately drawn to the collection’s eveningwear: a bomber jacket with sequins, a gold dress with straps that hearken back to the late designer’s obsession with Greek gods and goddesses, dresses with sparkling stones and fringe, and bustiers coated with diamanté embellishment.
Her relationship with the house also goes beyond the bling. “What I love about Armani is that it’s not just based on trends or being noticed. It’s about being remembered.” When one of Giorgio Armani’s famous quotes comes up in conversation—where the late designer says, “Comfort is the essence of elegance”—Martineau’s eyes light up. “I totally agree. and I actually think Canadian style is about doing comfort the right way,” she says, noting that the Canadian tuxedo might seem like a joke to some, but it’s a doable and laid-back look. “When you have a certain ease, you can carry yourself with grace and elegance no matter what you wear.”
