I loved the old-timey quality of Paul & Joe's Carousel collection description. "Join Paul & Joe on 'Carousel' – a thrill ride of fashion that spins beauty, whimsy and enchantment into a revolution of style! You'll be dizzy with delight, when you discover the whirling, twirling assortment of textures and tones that beguile with childhood innocence – and tempt with grown-up sophistication! 'Carousel' spring 2013 – it's a ride you will remember!" The text definitely makes me think of my childhood vacations at the beach. The only place I've ever seen a carousel is a boardwalk, so the association between carousels and the shore is very strong for me – reading this text I can practically smell the caramel popcorn and salty ocean air.
Anyway, onto some pics of this delightfully nostalgic collection!
The collection features three eye color powders in predictably adorable prints.
Here's Calliope (082):
Montmartre (083):
La Belle Epoque (084):
There's also a pressed powder.
The elaborate puff and insert lend a cushy feel.
The powder itself consists of pink, green and gold swirls reminiscent of cotton candy.
Finally, three new lipstick cases were introduced for the collection.
I purchased two of the lipstick refills. Even the refill carton is extravagantly detailed.
Merry-Go-Round on the left, Manège on the right:
Merry-Go-Round:
Manège:
Now it's time to play one of the Curator's favorite games – seeing if the prints in the cosmetic collection appeared in Paul & Joe's seasonal fashions. And yes, we have a winner! The cat print from one of the eye shadows and the face powder is borrowed from several clothing items, including a dress and top.
Paul & Joe once again delivers a solid collection, hitting all their hallmarks – an extradordinary amount of detail in every piece of packaging, a design that perfectly expresses the collection's theme, and a variety of cute prints, including ones made just for the makeup collection but also one that ties into the seasonal fashion lineup.
Did you buy anything from Carousel?
I'm counteracting yesterday's snow (!) with some oh-so-springy palettes from Elizabeth Arden. These are the first Makeup Museum purchases from this company, and as far as I know, the first time sunflowers have been used as a motif in makeup packaging (save for some vintage compacts). I was so excited to see these as sunflowers have been my favorite flower for as long as I can remember.
The New York in Bloom collection consists of a teal eye liner and nail polish, plus three palettes: a bronzing powder and two eye shadow trios. While I'm not crazy about the cartoonish flowers on the outer cases, I love the gorgeous embossed sunflower patterns on the inside.
Here's the bronzer.
Violet Bloom eye shadow trio:
Viridian Bloom eye shadow trio:
While I do think these are beautiful pieces, I couldn't find any information on the relevance of sunflowers to the Elizabeth Arden brand. I do know of their Sunflowers fragrance, but other than that there haven't been any references to sunflowers – it's not integral to the brand's identity in, say, the way the rose is to Lancôme or the camellia to Shiseido. But that's okay because it gives me a chance to talk about sunflowers in art instead!
We're all familiar with Van Gogh's sunflower paintings, but many other famous artists used this bloom as their muse too. We'll start all the way back in the 1600s with Van Dyck's Self-Portrait with a Sunflower, in which the sunflower was generally seen as "an emblem connected with royal patronage" but could also signify "Van Dyck himself…the picture is to be understood primarily as an expression of the painter's devotion to the king rather than as an acknowledgement of royal patronage."
Fast-forwarding a few hundred years (hey, I can't include EVERY single sunflower-related work of art!) we have Pre-Raphaelite Edward Burne-Jones's fascination with sunflowers. He wrote to his friend Frances Homer, "Do you know sunflowers? How they peep at you and look brazen sometimes and proud – and others look shy and some so modest that up go their hands to hide their brown blushes…I could draw them forever, and should love to sit for days drawing them…it is so right to make them talk mottoes, they all look as if they were thinking." These include a stained glass panel at Christ Church in Oxford depicting scenes from The Legend of St. Frideswide and a drawing, Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came (1861):
Some more examples from around Van Gogh's time include Mary Cassatt's Mother Wearing a Sunflower on Her Dress (1905), while Paul Gauguin actually painted a picture of Van Gogh painting sunflowers in 1888. How very meta.
Tons of sunflowers by Emil Nolde (these range in date from 1920-1932). I had a hard time narrowing it down to just these four works! Nolde was a huge admirer of Van Gogh, and "it took considerable boldness for a painter who
admired van Gogh as much as Nolde did to paint
sunflowers, yet he often returned to them and added a new and rich
interpretation to the motif."
In the latter half of the 20th century we have abstract artist Joan Mitchell's take on sunflowers, which she painted early on in her career and revisited throughout – below is Sunflowers III (1969) and Sunflowers (1990-1991).
If I were an artist, sunflowers would be my number one subject. 🙂
Anyway, I hope that this little survey of sunflowers throughout art history was an acceptable substitute for more in-depth information on Elizabeth Arden's use of sunflowers in the company's spring 2013 collection. I found the palettes to be a refreshing change from the usual florals we see each spring (especially roses).
What do you think of these palettes? And what's your favorite flower? Has it been featured on a makeup item before?
AERIN Cosmetics is the new kid on the high-end makeup block. Launched last fall by the granddaughter of Estée Lauder, the line features "a unique floral infusion in each product
that adds a special touch of luxury to the entire AERIN experience." For spring, Aerin took her love of flowers to new heights with the Floral Illuminating Powder. Encased in a square compact that resembles finely woven gold thread, the palette contains a trio of wavy-edged petals with touches of green and yellow billowing out from the flower's center.
Maybe I'm just under the influence of the vaguely Indian patterned dress Aerin is wearing in the promo image for her spring collection, but something about the petals in the palette reminds me a little of Indian textiles – specifically, the ones made for the Western market starting around the 17th century.
I'm nowhere near knowledgeable enough to go into even a brief history of Indian textiles*, but I did manage to pull together some images that I thought somewhat resembled the floral design on the palette.
The colors and shapes of the flowers on this Kashmir shawl are pretty close. This one comes from the world-renowned TAPI collection (Textiles & Art of the People of India).
The way the petals overlap slightly and fan out from the rest of the flower look like this gorgeous red palampore (bed cover) from the 18th century. This one comes from the V & A Museum.
Lastly, the overall pattern on this piece, with its slightly drooping flowers budding from delicate branches, is also close to the one on the outer case of the AERIN Garden Dusk palette.
I may be reaching in these comparisons, especially since the "World of Aerin" mentions no Indian inspiration at all, but to my eye the palette's design approximates exported Indian textiles. In any case, it's at least pretty and will make an excellent addition to the spring exhibition – a very strong start from AERIN.
