Olivier Echaudemaison

OLIVIER ECHAUDEMAISON has led a life as colourful as the lipsticks he’s famed for developing. tama lung gets to know the creative director of the House of Guerlain

When is a make-up artist no longer a make-up artist? When they become a true artist. Or, perhaps, in the case of quintessential Frenchman Olivier Echaudemaison, an artiste. The creative director of the House of Guerlain, who was in Hong Kong recently to launch the new It-Colour collection of customisable Rouge G de Guerlain lipsticks, has built his career not on creating products to make women look beautiful but instead by making women feel beautiful and, more importantly, confident.

“Make-up can give a woman style, personality and make her feel secure. You know, there is security in make-up. It can make them feel not stronger, because I hate that word, but I think much more confident. And a woman who is confident in herself is a winner,” he says. “I love to give them some tips to win.”

Echaudemaison actually started out as a hairdresser, initially as the personal assistant to the famed Alexandre de Paris. “A thousand years ago,” he says, joking, “I started a job with a magazine as a studio hairdresser. I was one of the first in the ’70s to do that. Back then, the models were very big stars. Not like today, when every girl is a ‘top model’ – they are just ‘model’ – the top models were Veruschka, Twiggy, Jean Shrimpton. Stars, legends.”

At the time, models did their own make-up, creating signature looks or what Echaudemaison calls “their own face”. He would do their hair and then watch them do their make-up. “Every girl had something unique. And I thought, I want to do that,” he recalls.

“So from the hair, I go to the face. I made a lot of mistakes until I found my own style, which was not really natural, but it looked natural. In the ’80s make-up was very heavy. On a 19-year-old girl, maybe it looks good. But on a 40-year-old lady it looks terrible. So I started to remove it, make it very simple with soft eyeshadow, not aggressive.

“There are two things that make women really women for me, and make men go completely crazy. Lingerie. And lipstick”

I prefer the personality of the face rather than the make-up. Always. That is my rule. I think the most important is you, not what you are going to wear.”

Echaudemaison would go on to do make-up for fashion shows, up to 12 per season, and a stint at British Vogue as a coordinator for beauty, fashion and covers. When he arrived at Guerlain in 2000, the maison was, as he describes it, “boring bourgeois” and “sort of a ‘sleeping beauty’”.

“I didn’t try to make it the opposite because it’s too dangerous to lose what you have and not gain something new,” he says. “So I go slowly by what I call toys – lipstick and things like that are toys for a woman. And I make beautiful objects.”

It was Guerlain, Echaudemaison reveals proudly, that created lipstick as we know it today. “It’s incredible. Before, lipstick was a little cream or liquid worn by actresses or singers on stage. And, as you know, in the 19th century, the bourgeoisie were very boring. The wives were taking care of the house and having babies. But the men had mistresses, who were the most glamorous. Just look at the paintings – they used candle wax and colour on their lips.

“So in the beginning women wore lipstick to keep the husbands at home,” he continues, laughing. “There are two things that make women really women for me, and make men go completely crazy. Lingerie. And lipstick. You can be in a restaurant in Paris or anywhere else and if a girl arrives wearing stilettos, with red lips, all the guys look and go – uh – ‘sex bomb’. A girl arrives with flat shoes and no lipstick, nobody looks. It’s fascinating.”

It was only natural, then, that Echaudemaison would transform lipstick for the new generation of Guerlain customers. “I wanted what a woman always needs to apply lipstick: a mirror. But I wanted the mirror to be very discreet. You can flirt with it in a restaurant. Flirting is part of being feminine. And it’s very important to make a woman happy,” he says, showing how the Rouge G case flips open to reveal a mirror. “I’m always thinking, how can I make women happy? So: lipstick, flirting and to have a mirror. And that was really a revolution in that business.”

Rouge G de Guerlain has since become one of the maison’s most iconic products, and Echaudemaison’s one true must-have. “It’s a big mistake to be without lipstick,” he says. “What’s fascinating to me about lipstick is that sometimes it changes the colour of the skin and suddenly creates a light in the eyes. I can see sunshine in a woman’s eyes because of the lipstick. It just gives a touch of – ding! – sparkle.”