While many celebrities are involved in the beauty industry as spokespersons and models, there are comparatively few partnerships between beauty brands and visual artists. Yet a handful of brilliant alliances do exist and are worthy of shining a light on.
Two early 20th-century eccentrics, fashion couturier Elsa Schiaparelli and Surrealist painter Salvador Dali, teamed up in the late ’30s to created avant-garde fashion together, and Dali began illustrating perfume advertisements for the designer. He experimented with her cosmetic packaging, and in 1946 the artist worked on the Schiaparelli Le Roy Soleil fragrance, for which he designed the lavish Baccarat crystal bottle and perfume case. Only 2,000 were made, and they occasionally pop up on auction today.
A few decades later, the enigmatic pop-art king, Andy Warhol, came on the scene bending all norms and making the public question the meaning of art. He surprised again in the ’80s when he appeared in a Vidal Sassoon men’s hairspray ad. Somewhat ironic since he wore a wig.
Another marriage between artist and beauty brand came in 1980, when Shiseido tapped French polymath Serge Lutens to conceive and execute its entire brand image and create its fragrances. Lutens was not only a master perfumer, he was a hair and makeup artist, a photographer, philosophical filmmaker, a clothing designer, and an architect, even designing Shiseido’s boutique d’image in Paris. Lutens went on to create an eponymous line of eau de perfumes in 2000, which are still available today.
It was the Millennial era when MAC Cosmetics hit the industry with a more vibrant aesthetic and bold bravado, quickly garnering Madonna as a fan, putting them on the map. In the ’90s, the owners, who were life and business partners, created the Viva Glam campaign using then little-known RuPaul as the face, where 100 percent of the VG capsule sales would go to support AIDS/HIV research. MAC has consistently used visual artists to create its advertisements, including using the artists Marilyn Minter and Cindy Sherman, adding to the notion that art and commerce lifts both worlds.
Ever since Marc Jacobs helmed the design at Louis Vuitton working with artists such as Takashi Murakami and Richard Prince to reimagine its handbag collections, the house has continued this successful tact. Currently Vuitton commissioned whimsical package redesigns for its fragrances by the renowned contemporary artist Yayoi Kusama.
Another limited-edition makeup collection was NARS x Man Ray for Holiday 2017. Makeup artist and ’90s fashion photographer Francois Nars, better known as the founder of NARS Cosmetics, said at the time in response to using the iconic work of Man Ray, “To me, something brilliantly colored can look great represented in black and white. The lack of color forces you to see something deeper in the object, but often just as beautiful. Makeup is similar. It’s not always about color on the face. A very graphic, lined eye or defined lip creates a look that isn’t about color at all. And, of course, some makeup—black eyeliner or a very dark red lip against pale skin—can appear almost black and white . . . As a makeup artist, I studied Man Ray’s models very carefully: the shape of a lip, the graphic eyeliner, the placement of the rouge on the cheek. The incredible thing about Man Ray is how his style still seems new, fresh, sharp, even today.”
A similar vision that successfully harks to references of the past, of theater, of art and photography, and with a deep understanding of color and composition, is the undeniably brilliant and world’s most sought-after makeup artist, Pat McGrath. She has painted faces for more runway shows, magazine covers, and editorials than any other artist. She launched her makeup line, Pat McGrath Labs, in 2015, becoming a $1 billion company by 2019. Mind-blowing and inspiring, indeed.