Lily is on the cover of Byrdie! You can check out some photos in the gallery, a video, and her interview below.

BYRDIE – On the surface, everything about my lunch date with Lily Collins appears normal. We’re dining in the outdoor restaurant of one of L.A.’s most storied hotels, frequented by Hollywood legends like Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor, and famous for its ivy-lined walls, currently filtering in L.A.’s seasonless sunshine. But there has been nothing “normal” about the year of 2020, as the entire world grapples with a deadly virus, and the words “pandemic” and “contagion” spell out our reality (instead of an apocalyptic film featuring Matt Damon and Gwyneth Paltrow). This explains why Lily, dressed in a pewter Maje blazer and dark jeans, is palpably hesitant when the hostess leads us to our table in the center of the outdoor space, flocked in every direction by groups of chattering guests. Los Angeles has only recently eased its dining restrictions to allow for outdoor service, and thus, something as “normal” as an afternoon lunch interview carries with it the added weight of months of social distancing, optics, and the unease of safety protocol (are the tables really six feet apart, I wonder…).

“This is the first time I’ve eaten at a restaurant since quarantine started,” Lily whispers to me, eye wide as we sit down. She seems slightly shell-shocked, which is understandable since the beginning of quarantine was in March and we are now dining together at the tail-end of October. I flag down our hostess and request a quieter, more socially-distant table. Luckily, there happens to be one in another area of the restaurant, and as we sit down, Lily visibly relaxes with a sigh. “I’m sorry, it’s just that I haven’t been around this many people for so long,” she apologizes, swirling liquid Stevia into her hot black tea. “It was a lot.”

Now that we’re alone(ish), I begin to experience what can only be described as the Lightness of Lily. I can’t pinpoint what it is exactly—her openness, easy laugh, or maybe just her smile—but there’s an unmistakable aura of happiness emanating off of her, made more noticeable by the fact that it’s so rare to encounter this type of joyful lightness during such a difficult year. Seconds after sitting down, she immediately dives into stories about her road-tripping adventures with her fiancé, writer and director Charlie McDowell. “It’s the best way to create a sense of adventure,” she tells me earnestly. “You’re taking yourself from A to B. You’re part of nature. We go camping and we’re in the middle of the Redwoods or driving through cities that we never would have gone through before.” She credits these road trips and moments in nature for keeping her grounded as everything else in the world feels so uncertain: “You’re literally breathing in clean air. You’re not feeling at a loss of creativity and you’re doing things with your hands and getting outside and building fires, and feeling really at peace in a time when there’s just been so much darkness.”

Each time her fiancé comes up throughout our interview, Lily’s face lights up. The pair was recently engaged during one of her aforementioned road trips through Santa Fe and Sedona, and though it happened after only a year and a half of dating, Lily says she wasn’t surprised at all by how quickly it happened. “I’ve known he was ‘The One’ since the very beginning,” she says frankly. “All my friends joked with me at first. They’re like, ‘How can you know’ I’m like, ‘I know. I just know.’” When the proposal happened—which she describes as “a surreal moment that you just replay over and over in your head”—she said yes without hesitation. She beams as she tells me this, then stirs her tea: “Can I just say? Honestly, I’m so excited to be a wife.” I ask her to expand. “I don’t think of it in any way, shape, or form to do with whether or not I’m a feminist,” she clarifies. “To me, it’s more like, I can’t wait to be with this person, and now we get to plan something that we’ll have for the rest of our lives.” When she explains it like that, it’s hard to argue. The Lightness of Lily—it flickers stronger.

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