Clé de Peau Beauté held a lavish gala dinner in Shanghai on 16 June to showcase its Autumn/Winter Holiday Collection. The launch was attended by Clé de Peau’s global muse and spokesperson, actress Amanda Seyfried and collaborating artist Ashley Longshore. The Moodie Davitt Report was also in attendance as the exclusive travel retail media.
With the futuristic skyline of Shanghai as the backdrop, the event recreated the glamour of the “Roaring Twenties” in Shanghai’s most famous art deco monument: the Fairmont Peace Hotel.
Along with the Autumn/Winter Holiday Collection 2016 Les Années Folles, a limited-edition version of Clé de Peau’s signature skincare product La Crème was also revealed.
The collection will be available from October 2016 in Japan, China, Taiwan, South Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia, USA, Canada and Russia.
The Shiseido-owned prestige skincare and make-up brand already enjoys huge success in Asia and has been earmarked by the Shiseido Group for significant expansion within travel retail in 2016 and beyond.
The Holiday Collection marks a special collaboration between Clé de Peau Beauté and contemporary artist Ashley Longshore who was commissioned to design the packaging for the Limited Edition Holiday Collection 2016 and also for a limited edition La Crème. A thoroughly modern artist who draws on pop culture and the cult of celebrity in her work, Ashley Longshore has been compared to Andy Warhol thanks to her use of iconographic figures, recognisable brands and her celebrity fans.
Clé de Peau Make-up Creative Director Lucia Pieroni asked the American artist to design packaging that would combine edginess with joie de vivre, inspired by the liberated women of the Twenties.
Speaking to Ashley Longshore at the launch, The Moodie Davitt Report asked her about the process. “My paintings are really statement pieces. They are all about colour and sparkle and shine and 100% positivity. I paint on big canvases so the biggest challenge was being very aware of the composition and knowing that it would be transferred onto something very small.
“I just knew instantly that I could paint something really gorgeous and that Clé de Peau’s experts would figure out combining the artwork with packaging. It was a true collaboration. They really knew how to take my artwork and translate it very well onto the packages and the brush cases and the compacts.”
Les Années Folles is the limited-edition part of the Autumn/Winter collection featuring these designs. Camellias, peacock headdresses, diamonds and sparkle adorn Longshore’s bold images which have been turned into covetable compacts:
Eye Colour Palette – contains eight eye shadows embossed with a geometric art deco design.
Lip Colour Palette – is available in two versions. A camellia design features on the “Putting on the Ritz” compact based around a red lip colour while a hummingbird decorates “Gilded Grape” and its magenta lip colour.
Colour Make-up Brush Set – a bejewelled Twenties woman wearing a flamboyant peacock headdress trails around the zip-up case turning a practical set of brushes into a luxurious dressing table addition. The case includes large and medium eye shadow brushes; a small eye shadow or eye liner brush; a powder brush and a retractable lip brush.
La Crème – Clé de Peau’s signature high-performance cream includes intensive ingredients such as inositol, rosemary extract and citrus unshiu peel extract to deliver anti-ageing protection and radiance to the complexion. This version has a jar designed to resemble a kaleidoscopic, multi-faceted jewel, and comes in a lavishly decorated box featuring Longshore’s jewellery motifs topped with painted diamonds and emeralds.
When asked about her highlights of the range, Longshore said: “100% La Crème because it’s amazing and for sure the red lipstick. For me the Clé de Peau red lipstick is the best red on the planet. Instant gratification usually always gets you in trouble…unless you’re putting on a red lip.”
The Autumn/Winter colour make-up collection also features new Radiant Liquid Rouge in eight shades; two Eye Colour Quads, one featuring rich greens and the other peachy-browns; two new Cream Eye Colour Solo in a blue steely grey and smoky near-black and Luminizing Face Enhancer. These products will be available from August 2016.
As Ashley Longshore prepared to leave Shanghai for the next press launch in Tokyo we asked her how does a globe-trotting, zeitgeist-capturing artist view the airport environment and the travel retail experience?
“I think maybe it’s getting better. You know, I used to say back in the day, why don’t they do manicures and pedicures in the airport and then all of a sudden you can get a manicure and a pedicure in the airport.
“And then I’m like why do they not have little pods that I can rent for eight or nine hours when I’ve got these layovers that are ungodly and now they have those in the airports. I think maybe because women are working more and travelling more and we demand that, you know what I mean? I need a little luxury. What we all really need are private jets…”
