I was so pleased I was able to trek up to NYC last Thursday to see Makeup in New York's show and vintage lipstick exhibition! It was fun to walk around and see all the packaging companies, but the main draw for me, of course, was seeing some highlights from Lips of Luxury up close and in person.
The show was held at Center 548 in Chelsea, which is an area of NYC I'm not too familiar with – we normally stick to Soho and Union Square, with occasional jaunts to where all the department stores are (uptown? downtown?):
Nice little brochures were provided when you checked in.
I eagerly searched to find where the lipstick exhibition was.
Fortunately it was on the 2nd floor so I didn't have to climb too many steps to get there!
Right up front were the Revlon Couturines!!
Behind those was that crazy Lenox lipstick holder:
Some other treasures:
Why yes, that IS a mermaid-shaped lipstick case!!
Huge dork that I am, I had brought my copy of Lips of Luxury with me in the hopes of getting either Jean-Marie Martin-Hattenberg (the author) or Anne Camilli (Editorial Director) to sign it, if they happened to be at the exhibition. And I thought maybe I could give them my card. I did in fact meet Anne, but ultimately I was too chicken to actually ask for an autograph or start plugging the Makeup Museum. My husband pointed out that it may not have been as weird as I thought to ask her to sign the book, as she was the one who, you know, helped write it. But I thought I might come off as annoying or worse, some kind of creepy stalker, so I just said I was a big fan of the book and left her alone.
Overall, I thought it was a well-curated exhibition. The selections were definitely what I would have chosen from the book. I did think, however, that the presentation could use a little work. The glass jars with the pink tops were cute, but the acrylic stands that some of the lipsticks were sitting on within them looked pretty cheap. And the jar wasn't the best choice of display vessel for the Alberto Guardiani lipstick shoe – it looked squashed in there! I also would have made the label text nicer and with thicker paper. Good typography and quality paper goes a long way. Of course, I have little room to talk since I tend to cram items onto the shelves I use for my exhibitions and the shelves themselves aren't tremendously well-made. Still, I think for a formal exhibition in a "real" public space I'd go the extra mile to make sure everything looks amazing.
After I was done drooling over the exhibition, we explored the other booths and saw what conference sessions were taking place.
On the way out I helped myself to a goodie bag.
I thought this was cool – it's all the packaging companies that attended the expo in Pantone swatchbook form.
A bag of samples of the latest and greatest in packaging:
Copy of Beauty Packaging magazine and a pencil.
Then after that we hit up Soho for some shopping. Unfortunately (or fortunately, for my credit card balance) I didn't see anything I wanted, but as we were walking to catch a cab back to Penn Station I caught a glimpse of something very exciting – the space where a new outpost of Ladurée will be!! It's supposed to open in mid-November and will be the biggest in the world!! It will definitely make staying in Soho all the sweeter once it opens, literally.
You can see more photos from the Makeup In New York show here. 🙂