" A Particular Beauty" cont...
DM: You’ve worked with Lancôme for the past 4 years now. How did it all begin?
ADM: Initially, I didn’t really know what to expect and I was a little overwhelmed at being part of a big house. I loved working with photographers and designers so I was cautious about moving away from that world even slightly, and I was still interested in pursuing my editorial and fashion work. But that said, working with Hedi (Slimane) and seeing someone like him working within a corporate structure – and making it work – subconsciously inspired me to go for it. I was thrown into it and after working on sitting shoots, it’s a different world and maybe I was slightly naive. Which may actually have been a good thing. I didn’t come with any expectations. I was just trying my hardest to do my best work for Lancôme, and at the same time treating it as an education. Two amazing women, who have acted as mentors and guided me through, took me on board at Lancôme. I was very fortunate.
DM: Besides creating new colors for lipsticks and other products… what do you do at Lancôme?
ADM: I didn’t think I would be doing anything else (laughing) – I imagined that was all you did at a house; you make colors, you make textures, and you forecast trends. You have to forecast trends two years in advance within a house; the reason being it takes that long to create certain products. In the fashion industry it works much faster, and I had to adapt my thought process when I joined Lancôme, and really thoughtfully concentrate on the colors and textures, so that they would be desirable and modern when they finally became available to the public. When I first arrived, I was very motivated to create new colors and textures… not necessarily rebranding, but to really focus the direction of the collections I worked on. To take the best things and simplify them. We worked on packaging and architecture, meeting all the different teams, training and developing the makeup artists and the people that work with them in the stores, selling the collections, conducting interviews with journalists and bloggers to find out what they thought of Lancôme. Afterwards we put all of that information together to develop the best products possible. Now I’m really working on the collections twice yearly – fall/winter and spring/summer, and I love it. But in the beginning it was a lot. It is very interesting and a great education, because it put me with people that I wouldn’t normally be in connection with; scientists, architects, and I love it for that. Making colors and textures, that’s just something I do and it happens when I work within my own world, and then I translate it into the Lancôme world.
DM: Do you also decide on the models and the photographers for Lancôme?
ADM: Yes, that’s a big part of it, but it might also be the easiest part for me, because it’s the last thing you do after working very intensely on a collection. And doing photo shoots is what I do every day and when everything comes together. Besides that, you have publicity and marketing, which initially I found tricky… because I’m not a professional at this and certainly not a public speaker. What I mean is, you are placed in a situation very foreign from your normal daily life… doing interviews with journalists and bloggers who are asking very detailed questions about the collection, why you chose certain colors or packaging, what was the inspiration, what’s modern etc. and it can be daunting. But I really enjoy developing new products and make-up and even though I’m naturally a shy person… I am much more confident and enthusiastic about makeup and beauty products and generally I have found these experiences and dialogues far less scary than I initially imagined. Doing the campaign in the end is definitely the fun and easy part. Of course it’s nice working with Mario Testino on it, because the idea is to bring the brand together, to have someone work with the entire world within Lancôme and unify all the collections. In the past, we had a lot of different photographers shooting campaigns. There is so much to do; skincare, fragrance, mascaras, foundations and my make-up collections, so it’s nice to bring in it all into the same family. I always try to have a stylist and hairdresser whom I love, and I try to push for the girl I want – like Daria (Werbowy) or Elettra (Weidemann). When I first arrived at Lancôme, I really loved the beauty advertising from the early sixties and seventies. Then you saw more of the woman…
DM: And it didn’t feel retouched…
ADM: Yeah, and it wasn’t just a close-up or a tight crop, you saw the entire woman. You saw the fashion, you saw which shoes she was wearing and you saw what car she was driving or elegant home she lived in. A double page spread might have a close-up but the other page had an image that defined the woman and the unique world she represented. I loved that world, so I was really pushing for that when I first arrived at Lancôme. I wanted to make a confident statement for the cosmetic advertising and push it in a new direction. And when Mario did the French Coquettes campaign with me, I tried to push for more than one woman, because I had memories of multiple girls in beauty advertising. Lancôme is a family and they have a lot of different, beautiful women representing them. That’s why I like using two women; Daria and Elettra (Wiedemann) together. It’s fun to be working towards a new direction for beauty advertisements within the Lancôme world.
DM: What do you think has been the biggest challenge for you during these first 4 years with Lancôme?
ADM: Things take longer than expected and there are so many people involved in the whole process. I’m normally directly involved with the person I’m creating with. But from the beginning at Lancôme, I was also told to make it strong and push it in other directions. It’s only natural that things will become diluted or elements and aspects are changed into something else, for whatever reason, whether it’s FDA approval or the approval for different countries – there are all kinds of restrictions.
DM: And obviously you’re doing certain products only for certain markets?
ADM: Absolutely. I’m very influenced and inspired by technology, Japanese, Asian technologies in particular. I work with a lot of their scientists and beauty teams, and they were the first people I met when I came to Lancôme. I’m inspired by their technologies and techniques and beauty gestures. It’s a very different way of wearing make-up and it’s very sophisticated. For instance they are allowed specific products and super-shiny textures, super-high grade metallics that you can’t even get in America. It’s tough when you find these crazy, amazing pigments or new technologies, or new packaging, and then they’re restricted because they can’t enter a particular country. But for Lancôme, you have to produce a huge number of units to be able to support all these markets, and in some places you can only make a small number of very specific products. In a way, restrictions help create newness – I believe that in all aspects. I think when gates are shut and doors are closed it makes way for new things. You find a better or another way.
DM: How many days a year do you think you’re actually working with Lancôme?
ADM: I have a certain amount of days that I need to work with them. My schedule is made so I basically work every day, because I don’t want to stop working editorially, with photographers, or during shows, but I also love being with Lancôme, so I have a lot of homework. The first year it was meant to be 20 days and I did 40… I spend a lot of my free time working on projects for Lancôme. There is a lot of homework and I like doing research. When I’m thinking about my own work, I’m always thinking about this too. They are two very different worlds and I need to challenge what I believe is right for them. It’s not necessarily my personal taste every time or something I would do in other situations. That’s what makes it interesting. I’m better when I work all the time, rather than stopping and starting.
DM: Any new products coming out from Lancôme in the near future you can tell us about?
ADM: I just finished my latest collection that we shot with Mario in Barcelona, just before the holidays. It was a red and black story; I wanted to take everything back to the heritage of Lancôme, the very beginning. So it’s really inspired by their original house, and an homage to Lancôme from past decades. The focus is on red for the lips, because that was the first lipstick they ever created. I love how when beauty houses first started, they worked with fantastic jewelers to create their lipstick cases – these objects were unique and very beautiful, and people used to cherish them. They were something a woman really wanted to keep. It was this idea that I was inspired by. I’ve been working the last few seasons on developing a new style of packaging for lipstick, to make it smaller in scale and more nomadic – made out of metal, using the same scale when redesigning the exterior for each collection. The focus was on red and black; very pure and simple and universally elegant, and appealing to a wide audience.
source: intermissionmagazine.com
