Nars: Still audacious at 20
Lipstick is a very seductive accessory,” Nars founder/creative director Francois Nars once declared, and those are words he still “lips” by to this day.
Twenty years ago Nars launched his own line at Barneys New York with 12 lipsticks that met his needs as a makeup artist. Luxurious in texture, pigment-rich and bold in color, they left an indelible lip print on the cosmetic world.
I remember being in LA at around that time and visiting a Rodeo Drive store just to try on these lipsticks. Daring reds were in and Nars offered quite a number of them, but the one that caught my fancy was Jungle Red, a fiery crimson that has since become a classic.
To celebrate Nars’ 20th anniversary Rustan’s The Beauty Source recently launched Audacious, a 40-piece lipstick collection that is not a retrospective nor reinvention of past hits but an entirely new range with an even plusher texture, and pigments so rich you’re guaranteed full coverage with just one stroke.
‘LIPSTICK IS AN INSTANT ATTRACTION. GO WITH WHAT WORKS FOR YOU’
“What’s interesting is that it feels like the long-wear of our matte lipsticks but it’s a premier texture so it feels great on your lips,” says Jenny Atwood Smith, lead makeup stylist for Nars Cosmetics, who flew in from New York for the event. “It’s more silky and more hydrating.”
Before selecting an Audacious hue for me to try Smith asked what kind of colors I usually wore. Since I was already an avid wearer of red she suggested the shade Annabella, taking inspiration from my blue dress: “An orange-red might be nice with what you’re wearing; it’s kind of a different tone than what you’re used to.”
Annabella, together with Jungle Red lip liner, which Smith says is a universal shade that suits everyone, totally sold me on Nars Audacious. Named after Old Hollywood icons like Greta (Garbo) and Young Hollywood beauties like Natalie (Portman), with colors that range from pink-beige to vivid scarlet to deep aubergine, the challenge will be picking just one that suits you. And these ultra-modern lipsticks are housed in an equally modern case: a sculptural matte-black metallic bullet with a magnetic closure.
‘A BOLD LIP WILL NEVER GO OUT OF STYLE’
The Audacious campaign model is Charlotte Rampling, the androgynous actress I first encountered in the film The Night Porter, where she played a concentration camp survivor.
“Charlotte’s ability to transform is unparalleled, whether captured in pieces of artwork, through the lens of a magazine photographer, or on the big screen,” Nars has said. “She has an amazing power to encompass a character.”
What I love about Nars is his unique understanding of glamour and what really makes a woman beautiful (hint: it’s not her face or body). His beauty icons were his mother, grandmothers, Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich, whose films he absorbed as a child.
He learned makeup at the Carita school in Paris, and plied his trade from the ’80s to the ’90s, merging the glittery sensibility of disco with the sober starkness of minimalism, and creating a thousand runway looks for designers like Karl Lagerfeld, Marc Jacobs and Dolce & Gabbana in the process.
Nars’ philosophy of modern beauty is based on translucency: to not mask the entire face with foundation but subtly enhance it, with the skin showing through. A blank canvas was never “it” for him, but faces that radiated character and personality.
‘DON’T BE SO SERIOUS; IT’S ONLY MAKEUP’
Having built his name on lipsticks, Nars also created the most famous blush of all time, Orgasm. “Looking back, I think the combination of its audacious name and universally flattering shade made it so popular,” Nars muses. “Even grandmothers like Orgasm.”
Working for years with the best photographers in the world must have rubbed off on the makeup artist, who shifted to photography himself at the turn of the century and has since created all the images for his brand.
Most inspired by travel, film, and nature, Nars owns his own island, Motu Tané, in French Polynesia, the same area that inspired painters like Gauguin.
“Makeup artists are almost like painters,” Nars observes. “We need to be inspired by our surroundings, and here, nature is so extravagant. It keeps me creative, fresh, new and modern.”
Ever the provocateur, he admits to also loving more classical, basic colors: “There are two sides in me, the shocker and the traditionalist.”
You can see both sides in this anniversary lipstick collection, but Nars’ ultimate piece of advice for women is to be bold in all aspects of living. “Embrace the audacious in everything, especially your lip color. It’s liberating, exhilarating, empowering.”
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Nars is available at Rustan’s The Beauty Source.
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