Creativity Crisis in the Beauty Aisle
And a couple of artful brands challenging the minimalist plastic tube status quo
Note: This post might be too long for email because I got lost in the beauty archives, please head to the web version to enjoy in full <3
A little while ago, I stumbled across a video of a young girl showing off a lipstick that came in a stunning metal case and had a chic little built-in mirror. I don’t really wear lipstick, but even if I did, I likely wouldn’t need the tiny mirror. And yet, there I was, staring at that beautiful thing, contemplating whether I should purchase it. A quick search revealed that the lipstick in question was the Guerlain Rouge G, and a little perusing on their website made me realize that Guerlain is the brand that makes those pastel powder pearls in stunning round boxes that hypnotized me as a child. I remember staring at them in beauty stores while my mom picked out a new lipstick and dreaming about the time I would be old enough to buy my own pretty powder compacts with silky soft puffs, elegant tubes of mascara, and shimmery eyeshadow pallets. Beauty stores were a playground where every little piece was precious.
When young girls walk into a beauty store today, a lot of what they see are minimalist, almost homogeneous plastic tubes, compacts, and bottles of barely-there skin tints, lip balms, and blushes. Once you walk past Dior and YSL, the last standing guards of chic and pizazz in premium beauty, everything blends together into one big dewy blob in a simple plastic container. Nothing really catches your eye unless someone on social media has specifically instructed you to get that one cinnamon bun lip combo they swear by for fall. A few summers ago, I was so desperate to feel something that I pulled the trigger on the clear YSL Candy Glaze gloss that comes in a stunning silver tube even though I knew that a $4 Aquaphor from the drugstore did more for my lips than the $45 designer gloss ever could. Still, I think it’s well-worth the excitement I feel when I pull that thing out of my bag to add a little life to my face on a filthy subway.
How did beauty stores suddenly get so boring? India Roby over at Highsnobiety offers a couple of sound reasons: from the rise in eco-consciousness and a cultural shift towards genderless and gender-inclusive brands to the business-driven attempt to encourage more frequent makeup usage (ornate packaging makes customers savor and ration it instead). Plus, most of the time, the independent beauty brands that currently dominate the premium beauty aisles, simply can’t afford original and intricate molds the same way that beauty conglomerates could when they owned the beauty stores a decade ago. “I think, at the end of the day, when consumers buy beauty and makeup products, they buy them for the actual product. When a beauty brand can focus its energy on making the best product possible with the best packaging possible, and the best collateral marketing possible, it doesn't make much sense to spend time on the "fluff and pizzaz,” my go-to packaging expert and a writer at DIELINE Chloe Gordon told me. “There are some categories where the packaging is way more a priority to the customer than others, like fragrance, for example, but for makeup and skincare it's a totally different story,” explained
, the writer of . “I'd say aesthetics as a priority is also generationally divided - brands more popular with Gen Z tend to be more candy colored even with default packaging.”Another big reason for the shift in beauty packaging design might be the way we think about beauty overall. Over the past few decades, premium beauty, just like luxury fashion, has transitioned from primarily a niche, art-adjacent hobby into a giant mass commercial venture. From the Elgin American Bird Compact to Schiaparelli’s Le Roy Soleil perfume bottle, both designed by Salvador Dali, to the Chanel No. 5 bottles immortalized by Andy Warhol’s and Louis-Nicolas Darbon’s art, beauty products used to be precious little objects that women collected and cherished, like art. Baptiste Bouygues, a co-founder of a fragrance brand ORMAIE, recollects a memory about the beautiful perfume bottles that his mother, the second half of ORMAIE, and a seasoned fragrance creative Marie-Lise Jonak had around the house ever since he could remember: “She won so many awards, and I remember those awards often were the big bottles of fragrances that you could find in the windows of exceptional stores. We had all of these big bottles at home as real pieces of decoration. I could watch them for hours, and the creativity in those bottles was so beautiful.”
When conversations about makeup merged with conversations about skincare, cosmetic treatments, and self-care and moved to social media where they are dominated by influencers rather than creatives and brands, we started framing beauty (and even premium beauty) in a very functional way. On the internet, a $30 “lip cheat” liner is a substitute for lip filler, a $60 “airbrush foundation” is a way to smooth out hypervisible pores, and an $80 hair mask is a self-soothing ritual. You look at most beauty brands’ social media and kind of feel…nothing? Even the sexier ones, like YSL and Dior, prioritize the squeaky clean imagery of their celebrity ambassadors.
None of it encourages creativity, wonder, and emotions the same way that the early premium beauty once did.
at helped me source vintage beauty ads and uncovered some truly one of a kind illustrations and photography. There was, of course, a lot of Serge Lutens, a beauty industry legend who shifted the focus of makeup and perfume advertisements away from products and functional descriptions towards the beautiful mystical characters he dreamt up for Dior and Shiseido — this stunning Rouge Lyriques poster, and these Art Play, Velours Et Gemmes, Couleurs Originelles, and Beaute Soins Parfums magazine ads barely scratch the surface of his genius. But there was also plenty of lesser known work, like this Faberge Stained Glass Lipstick ad from the 60s, this very 80s-style hair spray ad, and these Chen You nail polish ads that drew heavy inspiration from red Chinese lacquer work and Chinese culture in general.
Is beautiful, artful packaging and sophisticated brand imagery something that today’s beauty consumers are longing for though? There are quite a few signals that it might be the case. We are seeing a rise in young people’s interest in fragrance, and specifically niche fragrance – a space where influencers and brand creatives still work to fire up your imagination and evoke an emotional response to their products out of the limitations that come with marketing a scent through a screen. The holiday season that comes along with extra packaging, special offerings, and expensive campaigns, starts earlier and attracts more attention every year. Artful beauty products, like the Guerlain lipstick I mentioned in the very beginning, and Byredo’s oyster pallet, are gaining traction through organic social media content. Plus, in the increasingly digital world, consumers are prioritizing interesting physical objects and activities, and when the DTC beauty darlings enter retail, they have to think about differentiating themselves in ways that go beyond social media visuals, influencer marketing, and ads. Georgina Gooley, the co-founder of a razor brand Billie tells India Roby: “The reliance on retailers for distribution means brands don’t control the environment in which their product shows up, so packaging becomes a critical window into the brand.
Some luxury brands, like Chanel, are already tapping into the early 2000s luxury beauty nostalgia with two short films they recently commissioned from Martin Scorsese and Luca Guadagnino, both of which got millions of views. Although, at the same time, they are posting the tired airport bin visuals on their IG feed. Still, it feels like if there was a moment to break out of the norm and create something sophisticated, artful, and interesting, it would be now, and there are quite a few brands already capitalizing on it. “I'm obsessed with this brand called Kindred Black,” Chloe Gordon told me. “It's like French apothecary vibes meet an SSENSE aesthetic. I don't know how better to describe it, but the packaging system is entirely minimal with no label, stunning colored glass containers, oversized corks, and brings an artistry back to the makeup space that I think is missing. It's elevated and simple but also has an undercurrent of understated maximalism.”
Arabelle Sicardi pointed me to the Neandertal fragrance bottles that are sculpted by hand in the brand’s London atelier to look like one of the oldest and most ubiquitous design objects — flint knapped hand axes that have been used by mankind for over a million years. The brand’s overall creative direction leans heavily into the early human history and pays homage to the lost civilization of Neanderthals — sophisticated beings who mastered language, used fire, and created cave art well before our arrival. Other brands Arabelle is excited about are STORA SKUGGAN which not only has collectible packaging but also leans very heavily into music in their creative direction, as well as Lisa Eldrich and Dries Van Noten both of which recently released some stunning refillable lipsticks.
Personally, I’ve been really curious about an Australian makeup brand Fluff and the French perfume brand that I’ve already mentioned here – ORMAIE. I discovered ORMAIE from
’s newsletter and instantly fell in love with their exquisite bottles that come with uniquely shaped wooden caps, symbolizing everything from children’s toys to the abstract idea of femininity. “My favorite works of art, my favorite books, are always when you are going to speak about something personal. That is where the beauty of creativity comes from,” Baptiste, the co-founder of the brand, told me. “That's why there's a fragrance called Yvonne. That's the name of my grandmother. There's a fragrance called Le Passant - the smell I remember from my father that left when I was a kid. All of these fragrances are very personal. To protect them, I wanted a bottle to be a real piece of art. In order to do so, everything needed to make sense, to have meaning.” Ormaie’s fragrance bottles are faceted 12 times, like 12 hours of the day, as a reminder of how long it takes to create each fragrance. And sometimes, even specific letters on the labels are stretched and modernized to add another layer of meaning.
I also adore the brand’s frequent use of original illustrations, beautiful photography, and exquisite craftsmanship in their spaces and campaigns. They’ve commissioned a couple of tufting projects from Alexis Martial, like this beautiful tablescape and this wall piece for their offices, a handcrafted elm burr table for their pop up, and postcard-like illustrations and photos for their campaigns. It’s a luxury, artful fragrance brand that behaves accordingly and consistently puts a respectable amount of thought, work, and attention to detail into everything they create. “Today I find there's a lot of beautiful brands, but there are quite many that unfortunately can be quite cold. For ORMAIE, I wanted something joyful,” Baptiste explained. “Behind the exceptional know-hows we had, I also wanted something that would express a certain poetry. Unconsciously I probably remember all of the influences I used to have. When looking at those old fragrance brands and beauty brands, creativity and artistic vision was really at the center of everything they did. That's what I wanted to find again.”
Fluff is very different. I discovered them a few years ago when their cool reusable compacts popped up on my feed, and they came across as the rare type of youth-oriented beauty brands that assumes that young people are smart and encourages creativity and expression rather than blind consumerism. I love the packaging concept – it’s so different from everything else out there and it’s reminiscent of the old solid fragrance compacts, like this one from Elsa Peretti and Tiffany Halston. You can change it up and make it your own with stickers and engravings, and the brand itself releases limited edition compacts produced in collaboration with their favorite artists. They are also experimental with their marketing and have done everything from a podcast that explores people’s relationship with beauty to short films, art exhibits, and travel diaries. The brand overall carries a lot of this artful youthful rebellion energy against the beauty industry and how it makes us feel, gender norms, and the overall state of the world that’s easy to relate to.
In the research process for this newsletter, I stumbled upon Makeup Museum – an amazing virtual space created by Hillary Belzer who researches, curates, and tells stories about all things makeup – its history and the culture around it as well as product and packaging design. The story archive reminded me how just a decade or two ago, makeup was closely intertwined with pop culture and art. NARS collaborated with a surrealist artist Man Ray on their 2017 holiday collection, MAC worked with one of my favorite contemporary artists Cindy Sherman, and Clinique co-created a line of liquid lipsticks with a Swedish design house Marimeko. At the same time, makeup offered a window into what women’s lives and life in general was like during particular decades.
Today, there is so much going on in the art, fashion, literary, and pop culture worlds, as well as our culture at large, but strangely enough, the mainstream contemporary beauty doesn’t want to touch any of it in a meaningful way. Its boring plastic bottles and tubes exist in an equally boring, sanitized world where the lighting is always perfect, skin is always plum and dewy, vacation is everlasting, and everything is painted the perfect shade of pink. Its promise of escape and indulgence is alluring but it’s also increasingly disconnected from the time that calls for facing the objective reality, no matter how scary and depressing it is, and shifting the focus from one’s self to the people and communities that surround us.
IN THE MARGINS
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’s full vintage beauty ad edit below:
Everyone wants to be rhode so thank you for reminding me that ads used to be art
just like make up trends/ looks, fashion ("clean girl" aesthetic, minimalism, "old money") and politics have been regressing its really interesting to draw the connection with packaging and marketing visuals as well.