It's time to turn on, tune in and drop out with one of Kiehl's holiday 2015 collection. (As with the Nivea cream tins, I know Kiehl's consists of skin and body care rather than makeup, but I like to cover all sorts of beauty artist collabs.) Following their holiday tradition of collaborating with renowned artists, this year they've gone the psychedelic route and enlisted the work of the legendary Peter Max. Max created several patterns for Kiehl's gift sets.
(images from nordstrom.com)
According to the press release, the image on the above set is inspired by Max's late '60s masterpiece, The Cosmic Runner.
Peter Max (b. 1937) is one of the most influential and prolific pop artists of the 20th century. His enormous body of work is beyond the scope of this little blog, but I think that even if you have virtually no knowledge of art you'd recognize his style instantly – the vibrant color palette and whimsical subjects against a dreamlike landscape are fairly unmistakable. As for the Kiehl's collab, there was scant information on how it came about, but Senior VP Maria Gustafson states, "We feel a profound admiration for Peter Max's work. Our collaboration was magic, a real source of inspiration! Kiehl's shares a lot of values found in Peter Max's work, including love, joy, solidarity and respect for the environment." Indeed, Max's work doesn't seem to lean towards darker subject matter but rather is a hopeful expression of peace advocated by the '60s hippie movement.
Additionally, over the years Max has demonstrated his commitment to helping the environment by designing posters for Earth Day:
(images from petermax.com)
Given Kiehl's involvement in numerous charitable and environmental initiatives, I could see why they were interested in working with Max.
Overall, while I admire Kiehl's landing another great artist for their holiday collection, ultimately the packaging wasn't special enough for me to own. Max's easily recognizable style is a double-edged sword, in my opinion, in that while you know it's his, it's also hard to differentiate between his designs. The Kiehl's packaging looked just like everything else Max has done only with some Christmas motifs thrown in – nothing about it really screamed Kiehl's to me. Take away the Kiehl's name and it could be just another design.
What do you think?