I was introduced to this Italian brand via Beautifulwithbrains a few weeks ago. Leave it to the Europeans to be right on trend design-wise – geometric patterns and origami-inspired items seem to have been posted at every design blog in the past month or so. Just today Google honored origami artist Akira Yoshizawa by making the usual Google letters into origami shapes.
Here are some pieces from Kiko's Blooming Origami collection for spring 2012. I like the combination of colorful flowers against the stark delicacy of the white origami paper shapes on the packaging.
Eye shadow palette:
Face palette:
(images from kikocosmetics.com)
And because there are so many artists who specialize in geometrical motifs and so much origami- and geometry-inspired design lately, I couldn't narrow it down to just one. Enjoy a little collage of the angled goodness I've spotted making the rounds.
1. Mural by Matt W. Moore at Vincci Bit Hotel in Barcelona (via DesignMilk)
2. Almost But Nich by Jay Shinn (via DesignMilk)
3. Origami lamp shades by Studio Snowpuppe (via Design Crush)
4. China Glaze Luxe and Lush nail polish (via BlushingNoir)
5. Geometric pillow at John Lewis (via Creature Comforts)
6. Origami tea bags by Natalia Ponomareva (via Fokal)
7. Geometric paper installation by Nuria Mora (via DesignSponge)
Questions: which one of these looks most like Kiko's design? And which one do you like the most? I think that trippy wall mural most resembles the Kiko shapes. I also think it's my favorite, although the origami tea bags are pretty sweet too!
I spotted this line a while ago at Makeupalley and couldn't get it out of my head! Meet Idun Minerals, a mineral-based makeup line from Sweden. These products echo beauty balm creams in their promise to nourish and protect your skin at the same time as improving its appearance, and in the fact that they were also developed by a dermatologist.
That's all well and good, but what's interesting to me about this line are the illustrations – each face product features a different one. I looked closely at the packaging and hoped the name on it would lead me to the person who did the illustrations, and indeed it did! From what I was able to piece together, the niece of Maurizio Gucci, (grandson of Gucci pioneer Aldo) Patricia Gucci created them. The original pieces hang in Idun's Stockholm headquarters.
Foundation:
Concealer:
Blush:
Bronzer:
Brush box:
(images from nelly.com)
I wasn't able to find any of Gucci's other works, but I was inspired by another artist. Perhaps since the brand is Swedish I've got Scandinavia on the brain, but in any case these designs are reminding me of Norwegian painter Edvard Munch. The bold lines and broad, heavy brushstrokes of saturated color are similar to my eye – not so reminiscent of The Scream, for which Munch is most famous, but his self-portraits.
Self-Portrait against Blue Sky, 1904:
Self-Portrait with Bottle of Wine, 1906:
images from bc.edu
Of course, the girls adorning Idun's packaging are much sunnier than Munch's angst-filled subject matter!
Now that we've had our little art comparison, which one of Idun's packages is your favorite? I think mine is the bronzer – I love that the girl's head is enveloped in a peach (or some kind of fruit). 🙂
The life of a makeup museum curator requires me to be regularly on the prowl (ha) for items that managed to slip through my hands when they were first released. Occasionally in my searches I come across more collectibles that I had no idea about previously. Case in point: these cat blushes from Asian brand Holika Holika. I stumbled across them last week, but waited to post about them since I thought they'd be an appropriate follow up to yesterday's post.
(images from thecutestmakeup.com)
Pending the Advisory Committee approval, I'm ready to add these to the Museum's collection. They will make a great addition to a cat-tastic exhibition. 😉
I was perusing one of my favorite blogs, A Touch of Blusher, the other day and decided that if I had money to burn, not only would I get into collecting vintage compacts, the Museum would also expand to collecting items from non-U.S. brands – specifically, Asian brands.
Here are a couple highlights from some 2011 holiday collections. Talk about bling!
Japanese brand Aube:
(image from iswii.net)
Maquillage, a Shiseido-owned brand:
(image from www.shiseido.co.jp/mq)
Some more tasty morsels from other brands.
Jill Stuart Blush Blossom – love the elaborate packaging:
(image from jillstuart-beauty.com)
Majolica Majorca (another Shiseido brand) Puff de Cheek blushes:
(image from cosmo.ph)
And a very girly, princess-y powder case from their spring 2010 collection:
(image from iswii.net)
Thanks to A Touch of Blusher for all the inspiration!
Makeup Minute posted about the German Brand Uslu Airlines last week and I was struck by the company's ad. It reminds me quite a lot of Morris Louis' work, especially since they chose to orient the lip glosses vertically rather than horizontally.
(image from splendidcity.com)
Here's a work by Louis, one of the Curator's favorite artists (I like his work but he's also one of my faves because he was born here in B'more and attended MICA!) This is one of his later works entitled 1-81.
(image from ameringer-yohe.com)
Morris Louis (1912-1962) is known for staining, rather than painting directly on, unprimed canvases with thinned acrylic paints. This created abstract, monumental fields of bold color. What's really interesting is that he painted in a tiny room in the house he shared with his wife, and the canvases he favored were so big he had to fold them. He never actually saw many of his works completely open and hung up in a gallery. Oh, and he was very secretive about his work – he left behind no techniques of how he poured the paint onto the canvas, and no one, not even his wife, ever saw him at work. She would come home from work and the studio would be perfectly neat and the canvases he had been working on all put away.1 If you have a chance to see some of his work in person I highly encourage it. Not only are they sort of hypnotizing to look at, but you can really see how he served as a bridge between Abstract Expressionism (Pollock, Rothko) and the beginning of Color Field Painting (Noland, Kelly.)
I realize that an ad used to sell lip glosses and the paintings of a great artist have nothing in common, but I did think in this instance it was a valid comparison and a nice way to talk about one of my favorite artists. 🙂
1 All of this info is from a podcast at the Hirshhorn Museum featuring curator and Louis expert Diane Upright. For more on Morris Louis, check out this 2006 exhibition review in the Washington Post and an essay by his champion and famed art critic Clement Greenberg.