Best Beauty Products

Take Courrèges

When a fashion house and a beauty brand collaborate, the results can be refreshingly radical, finds Vogue beauty and health director Nicola Moulton in this piece from the March 2015 issue.
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Clive Arrowsmith

<p style="text-align: left;"

class="CaslonbodycopyCaslonBodyDropcapCxSpFirst">Look at them:

cute, white, round and playful. Just about the last beauty company

you'd think was behind the make-up on this page would be Estée

Lauder. No heavy, square compacts, no subtle colour palettes and

strictly no navy and gold. Yet this 12-piece collection is a

collaboration between Lauder and the French fashion house Courrèges

  • and it couldn't be more of a statement from a beauty company set

on modernisation. (Two days before the launch, Estée Lauder, whose

"grown-up" spokesmodels have included Elizabeth Hurley, Gwyneth

Paltrow and Carolyn Murphy, added 17-year-old Kendall Jenner - and,

by implication, her 30 million social-media followers - to its

roster, with more "surprising" names to follow.)

<p style="text-align: left;"

class="CaslonbodycopyCaslonBodyDropcapCxSpMiddle">The good news for

Lauder is that the Courrèges collection, while radical, is also

brilliant: glosses in solid compacts with squeezable centres (the

Lip Visors); a clever gloss dispenser with a lipstick-shaped

applicator (Super Gloss); and - Estée Lauder firsts - false lashes

and hair mascara. (Sarah Creal, who spearheaded the collaboration

for Estée Lauder, admits that "somewhere between the lashes and the

hair mascara, I thought I was going to get fired.")

<p style="text-align: left;"

class="CaslonbodycopyCaslonBodyDropcapCxSpMiddle">

<p style="text-align: left;"

class="CaslonbodycopyCaslonBodyDropcapCxSpMiddle">And Courrèges,

bought three years ago by a French duo intent on restoring the

brand to the powerhouse of the Eighties it once was, is an inspired

choice of partner. Its design cues - reflective finishes, a Sixties

influence and lots of pink - are pretty much the hallmarks of all

the most flattering make-up, too. (The universally complimentary

Super Gloss in this collection is actually in the Courrèges Pink of

the house's logo.)

<p style="text-align: left;"

class="CaslonbodycopyCaslonBodyDropcapCxSpMiddle">The only omission

seemed to be nail polishes - until it was explained that "in nearly

all the Courrèges archive shots, the models were wearing white

gloves - so we didn't need to worry about nails". If - as Creal

admits - the mission was for women "to walk up to the Estée Lauder

counter and say, 'What is that?' and then be captivated by the

results," it's a resounding success. Let's not forget that another

Lauder collaboration was with a certain Mr Tom Ford - which

resulted in a world-beating stand-alone beauty business of its own.

I'd bet my blusher brush that Courrèges might just follow suit.

<p style="text-align: left;"

class="CaslonbodycopyCaslonBodyDropcapCxSpLast">Available

exclusively at Esteelauder.co.uk and Selfridges, London. More

on the March 2015 issue of Vogue here.

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Read more: Kendall On Being Estée Lauder's New Girl

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Read more: Joan Smalls Launches Beauty Collection

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