Beauty Buffet

When beauty companies and fashion designers collaborate

When beauty companies and fashion designers collaborate, we all want a seat on the front row. When perfectionists like Karl Lagerfeld turn their creative vision to make-up, as he did for Shu Uemura last year, our pulses race a little faster. The most exciting collection of the moment comes from NARS, who has joined forces with shoe designer Pierre Hardy to create striking new nail colours and blush palettes (€39) that treat beauty as another accessory. "What I love about fashion is that it's a way to escape from the gravity of everyday preoccupation," explains Hardy. "That's a good thing. Fashion, nail polish, shoes, make-up, jewellery, it's all an escape and a way for your mind to play with your appearance." Inspired by his graphic summer shoes, there are twelve nail colours, sold in pairs (€28), including elegant lavender and an unusual rose gold, which Hardy describes as having a 'cool modern femininity'. There are splashes of fashion brilliance in the perfume world, too: Fredaric Malle has created a warm, almost leathery sandalwood and musk perfume to "translate Dries van Noten's world into a scent", while stylist Charlotte Stockdale has come up with an irreverent take on the classic Jo Malone bottle, splashing it with red paint (all 300 sold out before even hitting stores) and will produce a larger collection for winter. We'd love to see what Christopher Kane or Simone Rocha would think up, and it's surely just a matter of time before Victoria Beckham turns her hand to cosmetics, luxury, of course. For now, we're bracing ourselves for the scrum next month when Alber Elbaz creates a collection for Lancome; the packaging alone is a way of having a little Lanvin in our lives. Pierre Hardy for NARS at Brown Thomas; Dries Van Noten par Frederic Malle, £110stg, at www.lessenteurs.com.

This story appears in the May issue of The Gloss. Find more features like this in next issue, out June 4

This month we're using ...

Sally Hansen Maximum Growth, to strengthen nails wrecked by constant painting, €6.25. For delicious, zippy lip colour, we're lusting after Guerlain Gloss D'Enfer Maxi Shine, €28, at House of Fraser. And the office is fragrant with bluebells thanks to the new Enchantment candle by Neom, a long-awaited waft of spring. €55, at Seagreen and Brown Thomas.

Scents in the city

Where to find perfume's biggest names on the high street, and why frankincense and full-blown florals are the flavours of the moment

The high street is smelling sweeter this summer. Just as fashion designers reach a wider audience with high street collaborations, perfumers are breaking out of the beauty hall. L'Occitane, for example, worked with French perfumer Karine Dubreuil to create four fine fragrances, La Collection de Grasse. Francis Kurkdjian is the nose behind new Fleur de Figuier for pharmacy brand Roger & Gallet (who has been quietly comandeering the best names in perfume for some time). And Byredo, until now stocked only in the finest boutiques, is creating scents for H&M's & Other Stories. Beautiful yet accessible, they all bring the finest ingredients into the mainstream. This year, those ingredients include plenty of incense, patchouli and amber, because the biggest influence in scent right now is the Middle East. While scents featuring ancient perfume constituents such as frankincense and oud wood are not new, they're currently launching at an unprecedented rate. Since Asia is driving the global fragrance market, which is forecast to reach nearly $12 billion by 2017, with consumers in the Middle East spending five times as much on perfume as their European counterparts, it's no surprise. So Esteé Lauder is launching Amber Mystique in the Middle East first, before it comes here in June, while Tom Ford, ever on the pulse, has come up with Sahara Noir, a frankincense-based oriental in a precious gold bottle. Karyn Khoury, Senior Vice President, Corporate Fragrance Development Worldwide at Esteé Lauder, explains how fragrance in the region is, a symbol of wealth, luxury and good taste, and how demand for, the richest, most precious perfumery ingredients, is permeating the mainstream. But are we getting braver about wearing big scents? "We are becoming more daring, more adventurous, more assured: our public know more about fragrance, they educate themselves in the subject" reckons Erwin Creed of the legendary perfume house.

This story appears in the May issue of The Gloss. Find more features like this in next issue, out June 4