lm laduree Archives - Makeup Museum: Where Cosmetics & Art Intersect

I'm thinking there has to be a vintage makeup fan among Les Merveilleuses Ladurée's design and marketing team, since their holiday 2019 collection carries on the tradition of yet another popular motif for beauty packaging: the swan. This graceful bird also ties into the company's commitment to infusing their line with the style introduced by the Merveilleuses. Let's look at the collection and all its downy soft details.

Can I just say how much I love the color scheme? The blue is so perfect – not too bright, not too aqua, not too dark – and plays amazingly well against the pink and white of the makeup shades and swan imagery. First we have the brightening powder. The outer case depicts a swan holding a rose in its beak, while the powder itself is embossed with a white swan swimming in a pastel-colored lake.

Next is this beautiful set containing a double swan-embossed blush and lipstick, housed in a blue embroidered pouch with a tiny silver swan for the zipper pull.

Lastly is the star of the collection, a white swan-shaped jar filled with blush "roses". LM Ladurée is famous for their blush resembling rose petals, but these are next level.

I couldn't bear to open the blush itself, but it looks like this.

(image from bonboncosmetics.com)

Even the box is gorgeously printed with pristine white swan feathers.

So how do swans relate to the Merveilleuses? Prior to becoming Empress in 1804, Josephine was one of the most revered Merveilleuses, possibly even more so than Madame Recamier. While the more over-the-top Merveilleuse trends generally died down after Napoleon rose to power, Josephine was still considered a top arbiter of style. During her time as Empress she also adopted the swan as her signature motif. According to the Met: "At the approach of danger, with feathers puffed up and anxiously hissing, these birds protect their young within the wall of their white wings. Napoleon's consort, Josephine, and her children were frequently compared to a swan and its cygnets. The swan was chosen as her symbol by Claude, wife of Francis I, the French Renaissance king whom Napoleon greatly admired." Thus the reason for the abundance of swan decor at her and Napoleon's residence, the Château de Malmaison.

(image from wikimedia.org)

(images from ssa.paris.online.fr)

(image from the National Gallery of Victoria)

(image from metmuseum.org)

The Empress even had black swans imported from Australia and kept them as pets, along with emus and kangaroos. Sadly the swans outlived her. :( Anyway, while the swan motif correlated more to the aesthetic of a post-Directoire era Josephine, its incorporation into LM Ladurée's holiday collection is a subtle nod to one of the original Merveilleuses.

In addition to serving as one of the Empress's emblems, swans have a long history in the world of cosmetics, most likely since they are one of the symbols associated with Aphrodite/Venus, goddess of love and beauty.¹ Vintage compacts with images of swans abound.²

(image from pinterest)

This one has a really interesting history behind it, the Etsy seller dug up some great information on it.

(image from etsy)

(image from ebay)

Coty's "Golden Swan" sets were perennial holiday favorites from about 1950-1955. I stumbled across some newspaper ads for them, and lo and behold this great blog on Coty's history had an actual photo.

(images from newspapers.com and cotyperfumes.blogspot.com)

I couldn't find a real-life photo of this swan lipstick bouquet but it's fantastic. I'm guessing they're copying and expanding on the concept of Max Factor's popular flower pot lipstick set, which debuted in 1969.

I couldn't resist picking up a few vintage swan items for the Museum, including these adorable lipstick hankerchiefs (ca. 1940s-50s) and a lipstick case (ca. 1980s).

I think this vintage powder jar may have been LM Ladurée's inspiration. They came in a variety of colors, and the little niche created by the swans' wings was intended to store a lipstick.

All of these are lovely, but Tetlow's Swan Down face powder and accompanying ads are my favorite vintage swan-themed pieces…and they don't even depict swans on the outer packaging! Tetlow's Swan Down powder was introduced in 1875 and sold through the early 1930s. Collecting Vintage Compacts has a very thorough history of Henry Tetlow if you'd like to read more.

I was so pleased to get this one in good condition for the Museum along with an original ad.

While the one I have is in good shape, I'd love to own one of these boxes that still has the swan insert!

(image from cosmeticsandskin.com)

As was the case for many goods in the late 1800s and early 1900s, Tetlow's used small trading cards to advertise Swan Down. The portraits depict various stage actresses and other fashionable ladies of the time. The fan shape is a nice touch.

(images from worthpoint.com)

Another item I've become rather enamored of are vintage swan's down puffs. Before the dawn of synthetic brushes and puffs, in the Western world swan's down was one of the most common materials to apply powder in addition to silk and lambswool. The swan's down really is incredibly soft! (I forgot to take a picture of the vintage puff I bought…stay tuned for an update.)

I would love to try it out and compare it to my softest squirrel hair brushes but it's so fragile I'm afraid it would get ruined. And as I learned, vintage swan's down puffs are not cheap, especially the ones with sterling silver handles (drool).

(image from rubylane.com)

Fast-forward to the 21st century, when some more swan-themed items joined their vintage counterparts. Here's what I'm sure is an incomplete group. Also, I guess I should give an honorary mention to Etude House's 2015 Dreaming Swan collection, which oddly enough did not feature any swans on the packaging.

Who can forget the frenzy over the makeup for the 2010 film Black Swan? This kit contained each element of the look.
Monica Rich Kosann designed the Swan Dreams powder compact for Estée Lauder's holiday 2018 collection.
Too-Faced's holiday 2018 Dream Queen set also featured swans.
One can never have enough novelty lip glosses.
Sugar Cosmetics chose a swan for their clarifying sheet mask packaging.

Finally, here are the other contemporary swan treasures in the Museum's collection: a Paul and Joe eyeshadow from their fall 2010 collection and Guerlain's spring 2018 Blanc de Perle compact, which was a collaboration with Ros Lee.

So that about wraps it up! What do you think of the swan motif both for Empire-era decor and makeup? Which piece here is your favorite?

¹Swans are also associated with Apollo and music so that explains their inclusion in LM Ladurée's holiday 2017 collection, which shows them with a lyre.

²Tons of other vintage non-makeup beauty items use swans in their advertising and packaging, including Dior Miss Dior perfume, Cashmere Bouquet soap, Swan soap, and J. Lesquendieu face cream. Obviously I want to keep the focus on makeup but they were worth a mention.

Based on an informal poll I conducted on Instagram, the overwhelming majority of people who answered (92%) indicated that although the holidays are over, it's still acceptable for me to continue blogging about holiday collections throughout the winter. Consider this one on LM Ladurée's beautiful holiday 2017 the first in a series of holiday catch-up posts. 🙂

The collection seems to be loosely based on the idea of a masquerade ball, a theme popular among many beauty collections that stretches back decades. As the Bal Masqué in cosmetics could be another entire post, I'm choosing to focus on the most prominent motif of the Ladurée collection: the fan. It appears at the bottom of this printed bag used to contain body wash, lotion and hand cream, with a young lady coquettishly peeking out from the edges.

Along with the black cap and shoe, the fan differentiated the leg-shaped lip glosses from last year's version. I still say they're one of the weirdest makeup items I've come across.

The fan also appeared on the side of this face powder box.

The box's top is adorned with a masked woman who shyly looks down and also at us, depending on the angle. This packaging technique was a definitely a trend in 2017, with both MAC's Rossi de Palma and Smashbox's holiday collection featuring a sort of shape-shifting design.

But the standout use of the motif came in the form of a fan-shaped compact, which contains blush and highlighter embossed with a delicate lace pattern. The compact's silky pouch features several elaborate fan designs, along with pairs of eyes shown both closed and peering out from the black background, lending an air of mystery. The rich red tassel hanging from the fan's base adds vibrant color and a touch of movement.

As with the lyre motif from their fall 2017 collection, I suspect LM Ladurée was inspired by the fashion of Les Merveilleuses as well as vintage compacts. Let's take a peek at the stylish ladies of the Empire era in France (roughly 1795-1815). The history of the fan as accessory in Europe is far beyond the scope of this little blog, especially since there is such a tremendous wealth of resources on the subject, but I'd like to share a few examples of fans during the time of Les Merveilleuses. As you can see from these fashion plates, the fan was de rigueur. Here are just a few of the literally dozens of plates I found from this time period depicting women holding fans of all shapes and colors.

(images from pinterest)

I'm no fashion historian, but it seems that fans were made to accommodate a variety of events and different hours of the day, given the ornate one shown with a wedding dress (left) and one meant to be carried with a more informal day dress (right).

(images from metmuseum.org)

Some examples of fans carried during the late 1700s-early 1800s were included in the wonderful exhibition "Napoleon and the Empire of Fashion." The fact that the image of a woman holding a fan was chosen for the front cover of the exhibition catalogue demonstrates that the accessory was indeed a must-have, at least for certain occasions. While the fan was certainly popular before this time and continued to be ubiquitous until the early 1900s, the accessory seems to have reached the height of fandom (sorry, couldn't help it) in the Empire era.

(images from napoleon-fashion.com)

I'm pretty sure these sorts of images were what inspired LM Ladurée to go with the fan motif. But I wonder, as with previous releases, whether they were also looking at vintage compacts. Fan-shaped compacts aren't new; in fact, as we'll see, they're over 70 years old. Over the years the fan shape has been utilized for makeup mirrors and to hold perfume…as well as some rather unfortunate-looking (read: ugly) makeup compacts from Maybelline in the late '80s. I've included the ads for these abominations solely for your amusement. Even though they're in black and white, I can see in my head crystal clear how cheap and tacky these compacts would look in person.

However, long before Maybelline butchered the fan-shaped compact, Wadsworth released some lovely ones in the 1940s. Henriette, the New York division of the Kentucky-based Wadsworth, started producing these around 1941 and Wadsworth started selling them under their own name in 1946 (yet advertised them as new.) The last mention I saw of the fan-shaped compact in ads was in 1949, so I guess they had fallen out out of favor by the early '50s.

Naturally I had to pick up one for the Museum's collection, along with several ads.

These must have been quite popular, or at least Wadsworth hoped they would be based on the amount of advertising and the mind-boggling number of styles. In my searches I came across at least 20 different designs. While I would have liked to have gotten my hands on one of the compacts shown in the ads, this one was just as gorgeous and in great condition so I snapped it up.

It's hard to make out from the illustration, but I think it may have appeared in this 1946 ad.

Here are a few more that I enjoyed.

(image from etsy)

These two are from Henriette.

(image from pinterest)

While not quite in the same elegant spirit as some of the others, I like this one because it's a reminder that Wadsworth/Henriette was a leader in manufacturing novelty compacts, such as the table and dice compacts. And although I couldn't find one for the fan-shaped compact, I also think the company must have had a patent for it since I didn't come across any other brands with this exact shape.*

(image from pinterest)

But why a fan-shaped compact? It's not clear why Wadsworth decided to make these, but the clipping below suggests a "Chinese influence". I'm not sure which is more cringe-inducing: the sexist title or the cultural appropriation outlined in the article itself.

Then again, Wadsworth may have been ripping off Spanish flamenco dancers based on this 1948 ad, so it's hard to say which culture they were appropriating.

Still, it's difficult to say definitively whether Wadsworth was truly choosing to dream up some idealized notion of Chinese culture via a fan-shaped compact or whether it was just another odd design to add to their arsenal. By and large the designs and ads seem to rely on the common perception that fans were simply a sophisticated fashion accessory, and they seemed to be more inspired by European fans of the 18th and 19th centuries than anything else.

Getting back to the LM Ladurée collection, I believe it was the result of, once again, a combination of two key influences: Empire style in France and vintage compacts. I really like the way they've intertwined the two this time, and even without considering the references I've discussed here, the collection is beautiful on its own.

What do you think? Do you have a preference for either LM Ladurée or the Wadsworth compacts?

*There was another fan-shaped compact made around the same time, but not nearly as common as Wadsworth. Near as I can figure they were manufactured in Japan under the name Pink Lady. I couldn't find much information on these, other than they were modeled after more traditional Japanese fans than European-style ones and had faux pearl clasps. I also think they were sold empty and you could put a powder refill or any other items of your choosing, sort of like a pill box with a mirror that could also be used for face powder.

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