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subscribe to beauty blog via RSSTalking Beauty and Art with Daphne “The Mood Board Is In Her Head” Guinness
December 6, 2011 2:45 pm
When it comes to her new makeup collection for MAC, Daphne Guinness isn’t ashamed to admit that she made it for herself. “Lots of things that I do, I’ll do it because that’s the one I want to have, or want to see. It’s not because I think everybody else should have it,” Guinness says of the 25-piece line that’s due out on December 26. It’s preferable to “trying to just please an audience,” Guinness continues of her creative process, which may sound risky to business types, but when you’ve got as much evidence as she does that what pleases you inspires others, it just might be a stroke of genius.
Dubbed a “socialite” by journalists on tight word counts and by those who don’t know any better, Guinness is, in fact, a devoted student and practitioner of the visual arts. “I try to keep away from the fashion world because it’s not my world,” she says—a somewhat surprising revelation considering the ease with which she pulls off tricky pieces of vintage McQueen and an even trickier selection of ensembles from Gareth Pugh. “My references are paintings,” Guinness insists. “She’s an artist, she’s a colorist,” says Estée Lauder senior vice president and group creative director James Gager. “A lot of people pull tear sheets and hang them up on a board and say, ‘I want to do a collection that looks like this.’ That absolutely isn’t the way that Daphne is. The mood board is in her head,” says Gager. “I don’t know where it’s coming from, or what influences are happening; it just suddenly comes out,” Guinness confirms. “People may love it or hate it. But if you start thinking about how people are going to receive it, then you get confused.” Here, on the heels of a celebratory dinner to fête her collaborative launch at Miami Art Basel, Guinness talks to Style.com about the beauty of northern light, the colors of clouds in the Alps, and the “civilizing aspect” of imagination.
The fashion world tends to celebrate you for the clothes you wear. Have you ever thought that distracts from the fact that you often experiment with a similarly artistic approach to makeup?
I don’t think it distracts from anything, really. I think it’s all part of the same thing. [Makeup] is not something that’s an add-on. It’s never-ending—it just rolls from one thing to the next. And I’m not really conscious of being part of fashion and such. It’s part of the arts to me. I’m not really someone that follows fashion, because I’m not a journalist. I don’t need to know what’s going on. I just intuit, sort of, things.
But I get the impression your relationships with designers have meant a lot to you. Were you ever concerned that doing a cosmetics line wouldn’t be the same sort of collaboration?
I was nervous and I shouldn’t have been, because it’s exactly the same thing. You either gel with people or you don’t, and I’m very happy to admire people for what they do. I was really honored to do it because I like mixing stuff. But [the fashion world] is really not my world. If you take it back 20 years, fashion was not what it is now. It wasn’t about collections, or whatever. It was about finding your gang in a night club, and they’d dress a certain way. I think it’s a human thing. You know, very primitive tribes would make themselves up or dress a certain way in order to differentiate themselves from other tribes. I think that the landscape has become a little more muddied lately. I don’t like looking at what’s out there; it actually makes me depressed to see it. It gives me anxiety to see too much. My references are paintings. I know that sounds weird…
So what are some paintings or colors you had in your head for this collection for MAC?
It was sort of the dusty pinks of pre-revolutionary France. And it’s sort of the Thames and fog, northern light, which is rather different. If you look at some of the more watery pictures of Whistler, for example, and some of his pictures of bridges over the Thames—[these are] beautiful colors. It’s funny; people always think London is on the same latitude as New York, but New York’s on the same latitude as Madrid. [London] is a lot colder, it gets dark at 3:30 in the afternoon, and it’s always very gray.
Is your immediate impulse for a project like this to think about art of the past?
No, I look to the future as well. You know, I think we’ve been looking backwards a lot lately—too much, in fact, kind of like looking backwards on this Rolodex, and I think it’s now time to sort of, like, own our past but also take it forward. People tend to think Leonardo or Whistler were 60 years old when they came up with an idea—they were 21, you know? [So] it’s to the new generation—to get people out of this idea that everything that is happening is in reality. And I think this whole reality-based thing is actually sort of a very anti-art movement, because “reality” and truth are different things. We’ve sort of got to the point where everybody wants “reality,” but as a human being we have the faculty to imagine something. I think it’s a civilizing aspect, and I think it takes an artist to point that out. It’s like gardening, or Wordsworth—he didn’t see a rock and then make a poem about it. He had the poem already in his head. That’s the whole point.
Did you see this as an opportunity to create products or colors that you’d been wanting to exist for years?
Yes, yes. It was like, God, this is the best thing ever. It was so great. Lots of things that I do, I’ll do it because that’s the one I want to have, or want to see. It’s not because I think everybody else should have it. I always tried to imagine colors that didn’t exist.
Tell me a little more about those preferences.
On a personal level, I like cool colors—as in cold, but not cold. I was looking for something that could cool down a warmer palette. I mean, I still mix things together today. It’s quite fun to see what happens. The other day I just painted the universe all over my nails. It was really fun. I was having a moment. You should see my desk, it’s like pigments everywhere. I created a huge mess.
That idea of coolness brings us back to London, I think.
And Denmark has great light, and Gustavian Sweden, that period. Also wonderful painters like Kaspar David Friedrich, and the colors of clouds in the Alps, anything to do with that I like. And sometimes you see a touch of light orange—that cool orange on the top of a mountain is really great.
Some people would say clothes are sort of fundamental whereas cosmetics are not—we don’t need makeup, per se. Do you agree?
That was the seventies—let’s just let it all hang out. I think you can overdo it with makeup, I certainly have, but it’s because you’re having a good time putting it on. But sometimes when you’re on set it looks like one thing and then you go into real life and it’s a whole different thing. Artists know you can make a color look completely different by the color you put next to it. That’s what Mondrian and Malevich were doing. It’s fascinating. The colors are all there, it’s just a question of narrowing them down to what makes sense in a block.
It’s true. Artists—makeup or otherwise—experiment with this as much as anyone else.
They do—it’s elementary. A lot of contemporary art, I think, belongs in the natural history museum, in a sort of physics lab. I’m a paint-y painter, an old drawer. But I’m friends with this artist, James Turrell, who works with light, and what’s interesting about that is how just within 30 seconds the light changes just a little bit. It’s incredible how he can get 550,000 different colors with just three strips of neon.
Do you think the makeup of the future might resemble something like that?
Definitely, for sure, absolutely, completely and utterly absolutely—light refraction. I think it’s going to be so exciting.
tags: Daphne Guinness, James Gager, MAC Cosmetics, Makeup
