Graphic Design

Lucia Pica’s newest makeup collection for Chanel is a tribute to the cinematic romance of Paris and one of the brand’s most iconic codes.

- Emma Elwick-Bates

BEAUTY

Under the soaring ceilings of the Grand Palais, two Italian brunettes are chattering at warp speed. The 20-year-old model Vittoria Ceretti, a muse of the late Karl Lagerfeld, is having her makeup done for Chanel’s recent cruise show while Lucia Pica, the house’s global creative makeup and color designer, shares a few instructional words with her team: “Fresca. Leggera. Ordinata.” Fresher, lighter, neater. On top of a sheer, natural base, Pica is using a steady hand to deliver the runway’s unexpected statement: an intensely glossy black lip.

The collection is also Virginie Viard’s first solo outing as Chanel’s newly named creative director, and she is in the early stages of putting her own stamp on Karl’s and Coco’s legacies. But if her first and last looks—an easy jacket with cropped wide-leg pants, and a halter dress suspended from a stiff Edwardian collar, both in combinations of black and white—are any indication, certain soigné codes will always remain a part of the brand’s DNA, both on the runway and backstage. “Black and white are very Chanel,” Pica says of the inspiration behind Noir & Blanc, her new range out this month. “But I wanted to add a little more intensity, strength, and attitude,” she says, a twisting of tradition that has become her signature.