10 Magazine Issue 05: LA BEAUTÉ LOUIS VUITTON – COMING IN HAUTE

Louis Vuitton’s debut cosmetics collection was a long time in the making. Its genesis encompasses years of development overseen by the house’s cosmetics creative director, Dame Pat McGrath, but its inspiration stretches back a century—to the nécessaires de voyage crafted by Louis Vuitton in the 1920s and ’30s. These small leather trunks and train cases, equipped with tortoiseshell hairbrushes and glass jars for powders and creams, were created to house the vanity mainstays of the haut monde ladies of the era. La Beauté Louis Vuitton taps into that heritage to bring back the notion that beauty essentials can, and should, be precious objects.

McGrath, whose renowned flair for statement looks has enlivened LV runways for more than 20 years, approached the collection with her typical high standards for formula performance. Each of the eight LV Ombres eyeshadow palettes contains three neutral shades and a bolder pop of color like blue or green. The playful hues are arranged in the house’s signature flower shape in heavyweight monogrammed cases that can be refilled indefinitely, cementing their keepsake status. There are also versatile LV-embossed applicator brushes and lip balms in an array of sheer tints, but it’s the LV Rouge lipstick lineup that lands as the showstopper. Unfurling in a rainbow of richly pigmented reds, vivid corals, and just-kissed pinks in matte and satin finishes, the 55 bullets are highly covetable. They even have a custom floral scent—a subtle blend of rose, jasmine, and mimosa—created by the Louis Vuitton perfumer Jacques Cavallier Belletrud. For McGrath, it was key that the new lippies should be not only beautiful but also powerful. “Lipstick is presence,” she says. “It’s a signature in a single stroke. It’s how women carry themselves in the world.”

The La Beauté Louis Vuitton collection is flush with winking references to the house’s storied history. LV in Roman numerals is 55, hence the number of lipsticks. Shade 896 is a nod to the creation of the monogram canvas in 1896; shade 854 refers to 1854, the year the maison was founded. There are eyeshadow shades inspired by leather and a lipstick case fashioned after a vintage steamer trunk. And yet the range is nothing if not modern. The eyeshadows invite you to entertain anything from watercolor washes to graphic, dense blocks of saturated metallic pigment, while the lipsticks are made with at least 85 percent skincare- based ingredients.