Sandra‘s Closet

«I was looking for something poetic, like a memory – a natural filter that makes everything look dreamier.» Lucia Pica

Today’s post about CHANEL‘s new S/S 2020 make-up collection, called DESERT DREAM, will make you literally dream, something we need in today’s difficult times.

If the eye is a camera with its shutter open – always recording, turning experience into image – it is Lucia Pica’s unerring instinct to train her lens on visions less familiar. Seeking inspiration for her S/S 2020 collection, the CHANEL Global Creative Makeup and Color Designer took a photographic trip to the center of the ancient desert, an expedition that uncovered a completely new perspective on color.

Initially drawn to the desert for its famous orange dunes, sacred cave paintings and lunar plains, Lucia Pica was soon captivated by the uncanny silence of the vast nothingness she found there, its powerful stillness moving her to reappraise the landscape through fresh eyes. Shifting her gaze toward the quieter hues of the quartzes, basalts and shales scattered across the desert floor, and forests bleached by the relentless sun, Lucia Pica unearthed a muted palette that is surprising new territory for her. DESERT DREAM is characterized by peachy rose tones, cool browns and the romantic undercurrents of mauve, whose shimmering, at times metallic textures echo the desert’s hidden treasures.

«It was beautiful in the desert but quite unexpected,» Lucia Pica says. «In the desert, there is almost a universe of one single, dominant color – mauve – which really came to life with the particular photographic process we used.»

Like distant memories, the dreamy Polaroid pictures at the heart of DESERT DREAM lend their sensual soft focus and painterly abstractions to a makeup collection that is perhaps Lucia Pica’s most poetic take on femininity yet. Using the prints’ soft colors to bring subtle emotion to the face – mysterious, mauve intensity to the eyes, planes of warm light on the high cheeks and red-hot desert heat on the lips – Lucia Pica evokes a womanly state of inner calm, self-possession and utter contentment.

DESERT DREAM
SPRING SUMMER 2020 COLLECTION
Le Teint
Eclat du Désert CHF 70.-
Exclusive Creation (Edition Limitée)
Baume Essentiel CHF 55.-
Golden Light (Edition Limitée)

Les Lèvres
Rouge Allure CHF 48.-
191 Rouge Brûlant
Rouge Allure Velvet Extrême CHF 48.-
132 Endless

Les Ongles
Le Vernis CHF 33.-
735 Daydream
739 Mirage

Le Regard
Les 4 Ombres CHF 77.-
352 Elemental
354 Warm Memories
Ombre Première Laque CHF 42.-
22 Rayon
24 Rising Sun (Edition Limitée)
26 Quartz Rose
28 Desert Wind
32 Vastness
Stylo Ombre et Contour CHF 42.-
34 Contour Brun (Edition Limitée)
36 Contour Mauve (Edition Limitée)

YOU CAN SHOP THIS BEAUTIFUL COLLECTION ONLINE AT MARIONNAUD.

LoL, Sandra

 Photos: © CHANEL

«Women think of all colours except the absence of colour. I have said that black has it all. White too. Their beauty is absolute. It is the perfect harmony.»
Gabrielle Chanel

«Noir» and «Blanc,» the CHANEL absolutes, made elegant, timeless and iconic by Gabrielle Chanel and still the enduring signature of her House today. For F/W 2019, black and white, the ultimate symbolic (non) colours of CHANEL, are explored and reinterpreted by Lucia Pica, CHANEL Global Creative Makeup and Color Designer, for a stylized and sumptuous beauty collection.

From the formalized and abstract to the silken and sensuous, Lucia Pica infuses her new approach to these power colours of CHANEL with both an appreciation of their transcendent absolutism and an eye for the nuanced gradations of the spaces in-between.

In tune with the Modernist architectural and cultural environment of Paris, part of the embracement by CHANEL of black and white could be seen as a reflection of her time; the ebony and ivory of Art Deco interiors, the delineated graphic lines of the Moderne, the stylized photographic and cinematic images that proliferated, even those images of Mademoiselle herself… It is while bearing all of this in mind that Lucia Pica has approached the ultimate graphic colours of CHANEL, both celebrating and humanizing them – literally making them flesh, for the contemporary consumer.

Lucia Pica now sees these colours from the life of Gabrielle Chanel as part of a manifesto for modernity in beauty for contemporary women. Embracing the aura of the silver screen and the silver print, particularly concentrating on the gradations of colour to be found within these processes, sepias, greys and new «Rouge Noirs» emerge. Sparkling, shimmering textures add an all-over glow of glamour, while delineated and structured mattes make a more direct appeal. Altogether, the collection is a meeting of fantasy and reality, the stylized with the organic, a perfect harmony of absolutes.

«Black and white are the colours I relate most to Gabrielle Chanel; the time she lived in, the power she gave these colours, the way they appeared in her life. Black and white were in her surroundings, in the interiors, in the architecture of Paris as well as in the symbolism of her life.» Lucia Pica

LIPS
Rouge Allure Liquid Powder CHF 48.-
974 Timeless
978 Bois de Nuit
Rouge Allure Velvet Extrême CHF 48.-
128 Rose Nocturne (Edition Limitée)
130 Rouge Obscur

Rouge Coco Gloss CHF 39.-
814 Crystal Clear (Edition Limitée)
816 Laque Noire (Edition Limitée)

NAILS/HANDS
Le Vernis CHF 33.-
713 Pure Black (Edition Limitée)
711 Pure White (Edition Limitée)
Le Lift La Crème Main Galet 50 ml CHF 80.- (new!)
La Crème Main 50 ml CHF 64.-

EYES – The intense focus of the collection
Les 4 Ombres CHF 77.-
332 Noir Suprême (Edition Limitée)
334 Modern Glamour
Ombre Première Top Coat CHF 43.- (my favorites!)
317 Carte Blanche (Edition Limitée)
327 Pénombre (Edition Limitée)

Stylo Yeux Waterproof CHF 35.-
949 Blanc Graphique
88 Noir Intense (Repromotion)

Le Volume Ultra Noir de CHANEL CHF 47.-
90 Ultra Noir

FACE
Le Gel Pailleté CHF 60.-
(Edition Limitée)
A transparent shimmering gel

«There is an idea of extreme fantasy as well as reality in this collection, of something very stylized or delineated while embracing the day-to-day. There is a certain palpability to the texture; it is so real it becomes part of your skin. At the same time the sparkle hovers above it, becoming almost like an aura, a kind of glamour seen in films – LE GEL PAILLETÉ is very much about this.» Lucia Pica

The Noir et Blanc de CHANEL make-up collection will be available from end of August, 2019. The Le Lift La Crème Main (hand cream) will be available from beginning of September 2019.

LoL, Sandra

Photos: © CHANEL