Making magic
For Byredo’s creative image and make-up partner, Lucia Pica, inspiration comes in many forms. As the brand launches its latest product, she charts her enduring passion for beauty. By Mahalia Chang.
VOGUE AUSTRALIA: Tell us about falling in love with beauty.
LUCIA PICA: “My first memories are playing with make-up. There was a neighbour I used to visit often and she had a drawer in a bathroom full of make-up. I used to lock myself in the bathroom and put on all that make-up. Then I would spend a bit of time looking at myself in the mirror, then washing my face off, and then go out and think that no one would’ve noticed.” VA: Did you have an idea of what you wanted to create with Byredo?
LP: “I thought for the make-up of Byredo, I would like to maybe bring it closer to the philosophy of the perfume and try to transform this invisible medium, which is the perfume and the philosophy around it, into make-up. How I can bring colours into this? How I can express this philosophy and the brand with colours and images?
It’s about the internal world and our personal experiences and human experiences.” VA: Tell us about your working relationship with Byredo founder Ben Gorham.
LP: “It’s very organic … something he does very well is give people freedom. I see it also in his collaborations with others. He gives [people] freedom so that he eventually gets the best out of them. Because when you do that, you really make a person feel comfortable, at ease and in a place of creating. That person feels like they wanna give it all. And it’s not for ego, it’s for the project.”
VA: Each Byredo collection has its own story. How do those come to you?
LP: “The storytelling is always something very, very important to me because I’m quite a dreamer, I’m quite romantic, I get quite lost in concepts. In the case of [make-up collection] First Emotions, for instance, I was putting together some images that would make me think of the brand and I was like, these are my first feelings, my first emotions of what I’m feeling right now about this brand, and then I imagine that it could be also about the emotions of falling in love and that first period of having those contrasting feelings about someone. So how can I put those things together? How can I show them in colour? And it’s a little bit like language in a way, you know, you put words together, one after the other, and then they make the sentence. Some things represent feelings and emotion in colour.” VA: How did the story for the Remembrance palette come to you?
LP: “I was thinking about this idea of memory and how when we remember beautiful memories … looking at a light, feeling an afternoon that is so warm and balmy that it’s sort of tangible, the way the light reflects on the sea and that brings silver and gold. The way memories are blurry. I wanted to transform that into the palette. All the colours blend into one another. They belong to one another and they go into one another.” VA: What is your favourite product from the Byredo range?
LP: “I really like the Kajal [eye pencil]. I use that a lot.” VA: What three make-up products do you think every woman should own?
LP: “A good mascara, a good lipstick and a good concealer.”