Artfully Designed

Kime Buzzelli illustrated Urban Decay’s Show Pony Shadow Box.

Brands focus on the power of packaging as they collaborate with some of today’s top artists or create their own artful forms.

By Jonathan Ford, Pearlfisher

Beauty and art have been irrevocably linked for centuries and expressed through many artistic mediums. Through the decades, our beauty icons, themselves, have become objects of art—such as Kate Moss who is not only one of the most photographed women in the world today, but also one of the most drawn upon muses for the artistic community. The growing influence of art on popular culture and the development of its expression is undeniable, so we thought we’d take a closer look at just how this is impacting the brand design and direction of the beauty sector.

Collector’s Items

Kiehl’s collaborated with artist Jeff Koons for its Crème de Corps collection.

Limited editions and collectibles have become perennially popular in this sector, and many designers from the worlds of fashion and interiors—such as Chris Kane, Cynthia Rowley and Karim Rashid—have been called upon to create packaging. While this trend shows no sign of slowing down, brands are now favoring artists over designers as they embrace the societal trend for integrating contemporary art forms, entertainment and popular culture. Japanese pop artist Aya Takano recently created an exclusive art piece for Shu Uemura’s signature Cleansing Oil while Kiehl’s collaborated with internationally recognized, contemporary artist Jeff Koons for Crème de Corps.

And always out in front with any key trend, Urban Decay chose darling of the LA art scene, Kime Buzzelli, to illustrate its Show Pony Shadow Box using Buzzelli’s paintings featuring wickedly fashionable women.

Mixing Mediums

The latest concrete caps in designer Alexa Lixfield’s fragrance range are individually sprayed graffiti style in a magenta color.

There are a few new brands boldly trying to take this one step further—not teaming up with an artist, but truly trying to create their own art forms.

Number 4 High Performance Hair Care, in simple monochrome packaging, has a universal and unisex appeal—the minimal lines are open to interpretation as being of Swedish origin or even resembling Japanese structure. The brand manifesto states that it was founded with “the mission to develop a creative hair care line that runs parallel to fashion, science, art, music and industrial design creative cycles” (www.number4hair.com). The brand also runs a Style Bureau to work with new artists, photographers and musicians—adding up to a truly encompassing, diverse and forward-thinking cultural brand.

Other brands are taking their lead from sculpture—the new fragrance range from Alexa Lixfield with concrete bottle tops—or from architecture, as per Three cosmetics. Designed in Japan by Nendo, the packaging resembles blocks of stone that can be displayed together in any configuration.

New Forms

And, whereas, up until now, beauty has celebrated art/art celebrated beauty in largely a purely graphic sense, we are now seeing form coming more to the fore. While not a new product, Karpati Nail Care rightly deserves a mention. Its innovative nail varnish dispenser that fits over the finger like a ring has no contenders for its pedestal and is now included in the Design Collection of the Museum of Modern Art.

Karpati Nail Care’s ingenious design is included in the Design Collection of the Museum of Modern Art.

The boundaries are definitely blurring and opening up larger questions about what this could mean not just for the brand, but for creativity and the barriers between art and design moving forward.

Who Is Inspiring Whom?

Six Scents: Series Three is an exploration into the nature of childhood memories and the influence of adolescence on identity. Six designers from six different parts of the world were invited to remember the most definitive experiences of their youth that led to their sense of identity today and to recall some of their most intimate childhood memories involving the sense of smell.

Mavia Popova, of brainpickings.org, commented on the project: “Smells like modern art. At their most compelling, the creative arts go deeper than the aesthetic brilliance of a beautiful painting or the auditory indulgence of a superb sonata. They explore the boundaries of our perception and the intersection of our senses, our emotions and our intellect. And we do not normally think of fragrance or the olfactory world as a typical playground of such ambitious art. But experimental project Six Scents is working hard to challenge this assumption.”

M·A·C teamed up with Dutch designer Marcel Wanders for its luxe holiday collection.

Similarly, M·A·C Cosmetics—widely recognized for its stylish, artistic, quirky and edgy collaborations and whose partners run the gamut from the world of fashion and art to Hollywood and pop culture—is looking to go one step further in its quest to turn makeup design into a work of art.

At the end of last year, M·A·C paired up with legendary Dutch designer Marcel Wanders for its luxe holiday makeup collection. The results are stunningly beautiful and most certainly original. For a company whose signature packaging is all about monochrome and utilitarian cool, the M·A·C and Marcel Wanders collection retained that innate signature look with sleek black lines and tactile finish, while pushing the design boundaries as far from simple as possible to a maximalist aesthetic about the power of“dress up” in sleek but tactile and jewel-like compacts. The products reflect the edgy, high style M·A·C aesthetic and fit perfectly within Wanders’ design dream of creating art out of common everyday items.

This is the esteemed Wanders’ first foray into beauty and shows the demand for a far more artistic expression of beauty, and how we are taking the beauty experience to a new—and yet another—level.

At the time of writing, there are two exhibitions running in London which bear testament to the burgeoning artistic direction and temperament of the widening beauty world today: Perfume Diaries at Harrods and The Line of Dior. The Dior exhibit celebrates the work of revered fashion illustrator René Gruau and complements a new book The Art of Dior. A third element is the launch of a new limited edition color palette—Dior Exclusive Gruau Tailleur Bar Palette—which pays tribute to the favorite colors of Christian Dior in an intricately designed eyeshadow palette featuring a Gruau-inspired relief composition.

It may not be long before one of our iconic beauty designs takes on yet another level of meaning by being made into a new and true work of art following in the footsteps of Andy Warhol and Campbell’s and last year’s much applauded Green & Black’s mosaic by Peter Blake.

As art and design continue to merge or the order is switched, does this mean the brand now counts for more than the idea? Whichever way you choose to cut it, it is a great testament to the power of brand design as a creative—and commercial force—to be reckoned with. Essentially, this new direction challenges expectations and gives us a new way of looking at the brand from an artistic perspective. What next? Just who will inspire whom?

Jonathan Ford is a designer and creative partner of Pearlfisher – www.pearlfisher.com