Interview
Cool Colour Couture
With a strong couture heritage, Valentino Beauty created a new world of beauty based on three alliterative words: cool, colour and couture. This motto has informed every one of the brand’s beauty creations since 2019. Valentino Beauty Global President Garance Delaye tells us how the three C’s have inspired the latest makeup line.
During the L’Oréal media briefing at the TFWA World Conference & Exhibition in Cannes in October 2019, then newly-appointed Valentino Beauty Global President Garance Delaye introduced the brand’s new fragrance pillar, ‘Born in Roma’. It was an important landmark in this collaborative journey and though the COVID-19 pandemic has since slowed progress in the travel retail channel, the Valentino Beauty story has gained encouraging momentum. The fragrance duo, unlike any of its predecessors, was conceived with the brand’s new way of thinking and centred around the three C’s of Maison Valentino Creative Director Pierpaolo Piccioli’s ‘Cool, Colour, Couture’ mantra. Every subsequent launch after Born in Roma exuded the same inclusive, genre-bending thinking, expressed boldly with a distinctive Roman flair. The new Valentino Beauty makeup line is no different and according to Delaye represents the convergence of L’Oréal’s beauty know-how with Maison Valentino’s colourful couture heritage.
She says, “The Valentino beauty makeup line leverages the strengths of both Maison Valentino’s fashion team and L’Oréal’s beauty teams, sharing and expressing the same vision with different fields of expertise.” In many ways, the worlds of fashion and beauty have always been inextricably linked and this relationship takes centre stage with Valentino Beauty Makeup. “The vision and DNA of Maison Valentino fuels all our beauty creation,” Delaye says.
“On the one hand, Creative Director Pierpaolo Piccioli is at the heart of everything imagined and developed under the Valentino brand name. On the other, L’Oréal’s team of beauty experts provide the latest scientific innovations, lab research on skin tones, extensive consumer knowledge and retail expertise.
“The vision and DNA of Maison Valentino fuels all our beauty creation”
“We’ve done extensive work, underpinned by expert research and consumer studies, to have a deeper understanding of all markets and ensure that all beauty creations will answer people’s needs and make them dream.” Valentino Beauty is a collection that offers ‘beauty for dreamers’, but who exactly are these next-generation luxury consumers? “Our beauty line is created for both men and women, and is therefore genderless,” Delaye explains. “This highlights Maison Valentino’s values of inclusivity and diversity. “Thanks to the help of the L’Oréal Beauty Research institute and database, we have identified a specific target consumer who want the status of a luxury signature, while being cool and bold. They want to bring more glamour and more juxtapositions into their daily lives. When compared to average makeup users, they are younger, bolder, more sophisticated and are heavier makeup users. There is also plenty of duality with these new luxury consumers, who are both graceful and bold at the same time. Elegant and edgy.
“Our strategy is to offer a couture clash makeup to our ‘Punk-Bourgeois’ consumer target,” Delaye adds.
“Everything we have created follows this thought-process, from packaging design through to colour, formulas, shades, retail design, execution and ecommerce platforms.”
“Valentino Make up is a celebration of self-expression through formulas that amplify the couture DNA: uniqueness, extravaganza and experimentation,” Delaye comments. “It was important for Pierpaolo Piccioli to create versatile products with multi-uses and multi-finishes that speak to the freedom of expression and individuality that lie at the core of the brand. “The ‘couture’ element is expressed through the gold logos, and the ‘clash’ comes from the updated reds used for packaging and lipstick. The lip colour in ‘Rosso 22’ is a new red with a kind of punk, pink shade, a younger derivative of the house’s signature red.” On the ‘colour’ factor, Delaye says: “Special attention has been given to formulas that bring new beauty innovations to the market. It took several years of research to create highly-pigmented, high-performing formulas with very long-wear and high colour intensity. “These formulas have been developed with creative couture-feel textures that are both comfortable and lightweight. Everyone will be able to achieve high-payoff results but feel like they’re wearing nothing.
Among the line’s most exciting innovations is the Go-Clutch makeup accessory, created by Pierpaolo Piccioli for the 2017 Fashion Show, which blurs the lines between cosmetics packaging and desirable fashion item.
“The Go-Clutch is the perfect Valentino makeup accessory and customers are also able to personalise it. One clutch, two products with 15 possibilities. Not to mention, the Go-Clutch is refillable too,” says Delaye. In many ways, the Valentino Beauty makeup line breaks new ground, opening the doors to a new generation of luxury consumers who aren’t afraid to break the rules. “Valentino Beauty’s mission is to celebrate the extraordinary in everyone,” she adds. “Pierpaolo Piccioli calls it ‘Human Beauty’, as it emphasises the unique beauty that lies within every individual, with a couture approach.
“The creative approach is new as Valentino beauty offers a unique mix of iconic and iconoclast. It is an iconic brand, with a designer couture DNA; and an iconoclast brand, with the boldness and creativity that characterises specialist makeup brands.” As these consumers begin to occupy more of the luxury sphere, carving out new beauty trends and forcing brands to re-evaluate their own value propositions, Valentino Beauty vows to accompany them by highlighting the extraordinary in in every individual, offering beauty for tomorrow’s dreamers.
