“Art does not reproduce the visible, but rather makes visible what is not always visible”. Paul Klee’s phrase can be applied with meaning when the beauty industry, with perfumes as great ambassadors, flirts with different arts to deepen its message, explore differences, arouse emotions and gain, precisely, visibility and worship.The alliance has a future at a time when luxury, and even museums, are nourished by experiences.
Everyday objects cease to be so thanks to creativity and talent. They maintain their function at the same time that they stand out and act as a work of art that asks to be contemplated. Beauty feeds itself. “With a single mole, nothing is achieved,” says the now omnipresent Yayoi Kusama from the most emblematic shop windows and facades of international shopping. Perhaps that is why art is left to be loved and cosmetic products go beyond their always careful design to fall into the arms of painting, sculpture, ceramics, photography or illustration. The result catches eyes, feeds souls and, like haute couture, recognizes the work of the painstaking artisans and artists who bring it to life. Attention collectors!
“I do not paint things, only the difference between things”, said Henri Matisse. Today, two of his works, La Musique (1939) and One Thousand and One Nights (1950) are a collaboration between Guerlain and the Maison Matisse, a design house founded by members of the family of the “painter of happiness”. .
The former, one of the artist’s most famous works, inspires the Jar of Bees which celebrates its 170th anniversary with a launch from the Exceptional Creations collection. Hand-painted by the artisan Astrid de Chaillé, commissioned to complete the restoration work at the Château de Versailles, there are only 14 bottles in the world. Each of them requires 24 hours of work to become a work of art. Its price: 16,000 euros.
The Arabian Nights palette, a masterpiece of Henri Matisse’s cutouts with gouache colors, is recreated in the packaging of Jasmin Bonheur, the latest from L’Art
Guerlain also intertwines with high jewelry with Le Secret de la Reine, a queen bee set in gold and diamonds. An ingenious scented jewel, designed by the Place Vendôme jeweler Lorenz Bäumer, with a mobile mechanism that, when it opens its wings, reveals the brand’s chosen perfume. A delicacy of 350,000 euros.
Louis Vuitton has spared no resources to turn its second collaboration with Yayoi Kusama into a show. Dots and polka dots decorating facades, life-size robots and gigantic versions of the highly valued Japanese artist are monopolizing stories and TikTok. If the polka dots and pumpkins of the queen of immersive installations are a path to infinity, her projection on networks is not far behind.
In addition to her ideal bags, in the beauty universe, the bottles and travel cases of the fragrances from Maison Spell on You, L’Immensité and Attrape-Rêves are reinterpreted with the Infinity Dots, Kusama’s obsessively repeated and colorful motifs. Like any good work of art, they will be revalued.
Sisley’s creators, Isabelle and Hubert d’Ornano, are art patrons, collectors and lovers, which is reflected in the brand’s collaborations with their favorite artists. “We can only create beauty if we surround ourselves with it normally,” Hubert d’Ornano used to say. Its perfumes are inspired by the family universe and its different residences, decorated and lived with care.
The stopper of Eau de Soir, Queen Letizia’s favorite fragrance, has a real sculpture as a stopper. In 1998 Isabelle d’Ornano commissioned it to the Polish sculptor Bronislaw Kryzstoff, who devised the face of a perfumed woman. For Soir de Lune (2006) she turned the plug on the kiss of the moon to hers in love with her. Kryzstoff is also the author of the brand’s Les Eaux Rêvées, inspired by dreams and without distinction of gender. The last one, L’Eau Rêvée d’Hubert, is a memory of the creator of the firm with the geranium –which some call the masculine rose– as the star.
The illustration is also very present in the brand. In its special editions, in Christmas chests… On the occasion of the launch of Izia, in 2017, Sisley asked the English illustrator Quentin Jones to capture the universe of this new fragrance in images, creating a patchwork that combined the romanticism of roses , the embroideries created by Isabelle d’Ornano and the typography of street art.
The two doves perched on the stopper of the bottle of L’Air du Temps, by Nina Ricci, were the symbol of peace recovered in Paris in 1948. Their latest reinterpretation comes from the hand of Alix D. Reynis, who in his workshop Parisian man manufactures elegant porcelain objects by hand designed to be passed down from generation to generation.
Reynis and Ricci share a poetic vision of art that comes together in a new bottle clad in a radiant white, porcelain-like matte finish. A constellation of engraved stars creates a handcrafted finishing touch that evokes the delicate details of craftsmanship, and a midnight blue box, decorated with twigs, doves, and gold stars, is reminiscent of the fine wrapping paper used in Alix’s stores. D. Reynis. A limited edition collaboration is treasured the most delicate and sensual version of the classic L’Air du Temps.
The moon suspended atop the Eiffel Tower as seen from Issey Miyake’s window in Paris on a full moon night shaped the famous L’Eau d’Issey bottle. “Design has the power to make things universal”, thought the designer.
For the 30th anniversary of the fragrance, the brand relied on two artists, the French creative director and plastic artist Elisa Valenzuela, an expert in the digital field, animation and collage mixed with stop motion, and the Brazilian Luiz Zerbini, famous for his colorful universe. , dynamic and extremely vibrant, to make a reinterpretation of it. The result: video with soul and unique prints created with leaves, flowers and branches pressed on paper with highly pigmented inks. Contemporary dialogue of poetry and art.
When Loewe’s creative director, Jonathan Anderson, launched his first olfactory project for the brand in 2016, the makeover was radical. In the renewed packaging, images of plants and flowers photographed in close-up and in black and white became an organic and artistic extension of the fragrances. They were the work of Karl Blossfeldt (Germany, 1865-1932), a benchmark of modernist photography of the 20th century, and today they are still a hallmark of the brand’s perfumes.
His photo-book Urformen der Kunst is almost a manifesto of the interrelation between art and nature that inspired industrial designers and creators of the Bauhaus. Anderson recovered his file and botanical images of him went on display at the Thyssen Museum.
