There is something so endearingly ladylike about a bold lip. It exudes power, femininity, identity, and fearlessness—a paint brush at the mercy of an unbounded color palette and one’s body as the canvas. Makeup fronts narratives without a written or spoken word, rather propelling a language of its own, and Maybelline New York has been telling these stories for over a century’s time.

Twas a night of rose-colored celebration at the Bar Marmont for a cocktail evening worthy of not one, but two occasions: the launch of the new Maybelline Serum Lipstick and the brand’s new global partnership with Miley Cyrus. Rooted in nostalgia and transformation, the campaign introduced a reinvention of their classic “Maybe it’s Maybelline” jingle—Miley’s version. Only an artist as inventive, all-immersive, and unabashedly authentic as she could be entrusted with such an iconic feat, and Miley holds dearly her relationship with makeup as another avenue of creative expression.

“I mean, I take lipstick and I use it in all different ways—whether it's patting it on my lips and then touching my cheeks and my eyes, I use my colors and blend them in different ways, and I use my mascara not like everyone else does. I just feel like you can have one product and use it in this kind of multitude of ways that ends up creating really fresh looks even if you only have a lipstick in your pocket,” Miley reveals. Such a product can be found in all 16 shades of the lippy of the hour, the Maybelline Serum Lipstick, which uses hyaluronic acid to increase hydration without compromising pigment or a barely-there feel to keep it as dynamic as possible.

Under Miley’s lyrical—often otherworldly—artistic presence, we are all students. She teaches us the meaning of beauty from the eyes of a woman who is ever-encapsulating and unapologetic—bending genres in her music and letting her present life and emotions lead her creativity, not boundaries.

“Everyone has a really unique perspective on confidence and authenticity,” she says. “I think someone can kind of grow into who they are and discover themselves. And I rediscover myself all the time—I feel like I was born with a certain sense of self and a certain sense of authentic essence, but I also feel that I've metamorphosized myself a lot too.”

Dressed in a full beat or bare-faced, this collaboration showcases the fluidity of beauty and how it has existed within us all along. Makeup is a vessel of self-endearment, a tool to express precisely what you’re looking to portray. Maybelline is showcasing a world in which music and makeup intertwine in a boundless coming-together of mediums for expression.

As Miley states: “I think I can use makeup to kind of translate a genre, whether that's doing something different with the eyes or the lips or the cheeks. You can really kind of use your face, in this way, as another microphone.”