Toxic Nature - Illamasqua does it again

Illamasqua Spring/Summer 2011 Collection

 

Taking the arts to new heights - Illamasqua

Illamsqua supports student collections

It is always exciting to see a Cosmetic brand like Illamasqua support burgeoning new talent, so I thought I would post the video they filmed of the Media Fashion Styling students at their fashion show a few weeks ago. 

Alex Does It Again!

 

Fantastic article on Alex Box in this months Sunday Times Style Magazine

"For me, the inspiration is having a model that can be transformed," she says.  "I don't really know what I'm doing until it pours out on the canvas, and that canvas happens to be the model's face."

 

Illamasqua Body Electric. New takes on skin contact

The point of this blog was always to reflect a variety of inspirations that indicate how our understanding of the decoration of the face and body has moved on, subsequently it is not always about the final image.  Discussing product innovations is just as important to form an impression of how we wish to communicate our design intentions, so it is interesting to find that the cosmetic brand Illamasqua are attempting to address the desire to reflect skin surface as a canvas by launching their first collection of make-up for the whole body.

Inspired by the power of kinetic energy and the fluidity of the body in motion, the Illamasqua Body Electrics range "ignites the skin with intensity and highlights the body's every twist and turn to exquisite perfection."  Designed to highlight and contour the whole body, the intention is to to accentuate every movement and take body make-up to a whole new level.  This urge to decorate the human body could be seen as an attempt to adopt and adapt universal symbolism from primitive or exotic arts in much the same way that many Twentieth Century artists have explored this 'decoration', the German expressionists and Picasso are the most immediate examples that come to mind.

 The fundamental purpose of decorating the human body at nodal sites - head neck chest,waist, arm, wrist, knee and ankle - is to reinforce their vital energy.

Rawson P , Rawson P. 2005. Art and Time. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. p.114

This revised focus on cosmetics for the body questions whether this desire to decorate or modify the body is an attempt to impart spiritual or aesthetic energy, a reflection of our fear that the 'body' has lost much of its affect on the environment because of our dependence on virtual communication and an attempt to reconnect to the 'disappearing body' (Kroker and Kroker, 'Body Writing' in Body Invaders, p 223).

Cosmetic Identity

There has been a wide range of creative make up applications seen on this blog so far, sometimes the link to cosmetic application has been incredibly subtle, and the materials used, symbols and representations have been as important to acknowledge as the ways in which the make up creatives share identities and distinguish themselves and/or their work as different from others.  In light of this, having recently re read an old article from the Independent on Sunday (September 2009) written by Rhiannon Harries, titled "In the Twinkling of an Eye', it is interesting to put her views in perspective.  She discusses the use of extreme make up as a feature of catwalk fashion, and the dissemination of the approach to avant garde beauty onto the high street via musical icons such as Lady Gaga, La Roux, Florence Welch (of Florence and the Machine), and Beth Ditto.  In it, Alex Box (Illamasqua) is cited as believing that the experimental vibe that is transforming our attitudes to make up can be attributed to one person,

"There was a tipping point and it was Amy Winehouse", she says emphatically.  "A while ago she was absolutely the zeitgeist with her east London rockabilly look and I noticed the influence immediately.  Chanel did a take on it for one of its shows, Italian Vogue did a take on it.  Everbody took something from her look."

"Suddenly girls everywhere were going bigger with their eyes, their hair, their lips.  But not in a Jordan way - it wasn't just sexy glamour, it had an edge and people were putting their own personality into it.  In a short space of time, that has become so normal.  For me, it was a massive turning point in people's personal make-up."

However I am loathe to attribute the inspiration for the use of the avant garde within make up to popular culture alone.  Pushing the boundaries so that make up is used in ways that diverges from its traditional function of enhancing areas of the face in an attempt to define sexual attractiveness, is one that has also been explored within ClubCulture and by image makers for some time now.  In this sense, although as individuals we have to take up identities actively, those identities are necessarily the product of the society in which we live and our relationship with others. Identity provides a link between individuals and the world in which they live. Identity combines how I see myself and how others see me. Identity involves the internal and the subjective, and the external. It is a socially recognised position, recognised by others, not just by me.

The concept of identity encompasses some notion of human agency; an idea that we can have some control in constructing our own identities. There are, of course, constraints which may lie in the external world, where material and social factors may limit the degree of agency which individuals may have.  This construction of new representations, of new models, is a complex phenomenon, which implies several levels of analysis. The goal of this blog is to highlight the various social aspects, which might be related to the process of constructing an identity. The choice of such a goal is not an accident; it is repeatedly demonstrated that body representation, and especially feminine body representation, is the central pillar of any power relationship, either in the case of a man/woman relationship, or in the case of the more general relationship between politics and femininity.  It is one that popular music culture utilises for its own ends.  One only has to look to Bowie and the New Romantics/Blitz Kids to confirm this appropriation of style and attitude.

This is a fine line to balance, once the desire to construct a formal identification with beauty is removed, what are we left with?  As Box so succinctly puts it, "Where does doing something interesting and different tip over into ugliness?'

A Manifesto to Celebrate Difference and Self-Expression

After listening to the make-up artist Alex Box (Illamasqua) talk at the IMATS show this weekend, it is clear that she uses make-up as a language, and references her fine art background to investigate alternate methods of representing the self. As she so succinctly puts it, "I want to fly the flag for a very different way of wearing make-up". While fashion may have given her the context to develop the concept for identity as a make up artist, being told to dilute her work when first venturing out as a make up artist had the opposite effect and she vehemently opposed amending her vision. It is only now that the fashion industry understands that she is capable of saying so much more through make-up and that she herself has a vision for the future of make-up.

During the dicussion Alex proposed a new way of demonstrating beauty, and cited the Alexander McQueen Spring 2010 catwalk show and the film Avatar as symbols of the almost casual way society has begun to accept human augmentation and radical cosmetic transformation. This in turn has given the fashion industry a better understanding of how she intends to develop her work.

Used as a tool to subvert dominant patriarchal ideals of beauty, designed cosmetic bodies have the potential to be used to stage new non gendered identities. Refashioning the face and body opens up the possibility of highlighting the artificial nature of beauty while undermining neo-romantic conceptions of the body as 'natural'. Although conventional make up practices present the altered face as natural, it is possible to envisage the normalising of cosmetic practice that actively seeks the artificial construction of the face.