How a California road trip inspired a new beauty collection from Chanel
It was over dinner with friends that Chanel’s global creative makeup and color designer Lucia Pica decided a California road trip would be the perfect source of inspiration for a beauty collection.
“I wanted to go on a journey and get out of my comfort zone,” says Pica during a recent summer day at the Beverly Hills Chanel boutique about her 2015 California adventures. “I wanted to get inspired by what was happening in the moment, so we decided to go on a road trip to take beautiful photographs. It’s important a brand like Chanel dedicates time to creativity.”
Pica left her home in London and crossed the pond to meet up with her friends and road mates, photographer Max Farago and videographer Clara Cullen, who are based in Venice.
From there, the trio took to the open road, starting in downtown Los Angeles before meandering to Big Sur and back. They stopped along the route to take in the city lights, picturesque coastlines, sunsets and any other moment that gave them pause.
Farago snapped photos during the journey. Later Pica allowed those images to serve as her muse.
The Travel Diary makeup collection, released this month, was based on the colors, details and intricacies Pica found in Farago’s photos.
“It is a different approach to color inspiration,” she says. “There is personal involvement and memory, and there are all these other layers of things involved, which makes the idea of luxury even more interesting. I think that is what luxury is now — not just buying something really expensive but something with history and personal authenticity.”
“I feel like if you look at things with a poetic eye, you can find beauty in everything — the shadows, the lights, the moments.”
— Lucia Pica
The resulting 23-piece collection, which ranges from $28 to $61, includes face palettes, cream eye shadows, eyebrow pencils, nail polishes, eye-shadow quads, lip colors and brushes. There is also an accompanying video and book featuring the images the range is inspired by. This fall and winter 2017 beauty collection is available at chanel.com, and will be in Chanel boutiques starting in September.
“Certain pictures are direct inspiration for the products in the collection, and others are just for mood,” Pica says.
In her creative hands, a horizon became a nail color, lights in DTLA transformed into an eye-shadow palette, and the Los Angeles River turned into cream eye shadows.
“As a makeup artist, I know how to transform those things and imagine them on women’s faces,” she says. “I feel like if you look at things with a poetic eye, you can find beauty in everything — the shadows, the lights, the moments.”
The collection includes Pica’s first product for the face, Palette Essentielle, comprised of a concealer, a highlighter and a lip/cheek color.
“It’s all you need to create your perfect fresh face,” she says. “I call it ‘The Little Black Palette,’ because if you’re going out, the one thing you should take in your purse is this palette. I’m not doing the contouring and highlighter approach. I want to see beautiful, fresh skin. I want to see skin coming through. I want texture to be really transparent. I think that is what modernity means when it comes to a product.”
The road trip was Pica’s first through Southern California, but she was already a fan of Los Angeles before she got into the car. “I have always had a nice connection to L.A.,” she says. “Sometimes you don’t know why you have a favorite place, but you just feel comfortable there. [L.A.] feels familiar, but it’s not that familiar because it’s a new country. So it’s still exciting to the eyes.”
The Travel Diary makeup collection is Pica’s fifth for Chanel. While she says she has settled into her role, she insists you never get totally comfortable when you’re creating for such a legendary house.
“There is always another collection to make — that idea has to come,” she says. “You don’t get [too] relaxed.”
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