I was recently asked to write a piece for Zoot Mag on Shiseido’s Perfect Rouge, a new lipstick created by the renowned British-born make-up artist and Shiseido Make-up Artistic Director Dick Page, in celebration of the first lipstick launched 80 years ago in Japan by the famous cosmetics company.
I must admit that though there was enough to write about the product and the advertising image shot by Nick Knight was quite inspirational, I found it difficult to quickly finish the piece as my mind kept on drifting on different "Shiseido inspirations".
Indeed in my mind the company is first and foremost linked with the work of Shinzo and Roso Fukuhara. The sons of Arinobu Fukuhara, founder of the company in 1872, the brothers were sophisticated men with a passion for art and photography.
I remember seeing their work a while back in an art gallery and falling in love with it as their images ooze a special serenity, tranquillity and inner harmony.
Shinzo took his first images in Paris where he spent some time mixing with the local artists, after studying pharmacology in America. His style was influenced by pictorialism and this is clear by looking at his pictures of park chairs, bookstores and scenes under bridges.
When he went back to Japan Shinzo proved instrumental in establishing camera societies such as the group Shashin Geijutsu-sha (The Photography of Art), exhibitions and theoretical publications like the volume The Light with Its Harmony, in which he described the principles of modern photography.
In 1922 he also published his first book of photographs, Paris et la Seine, that featured images he had taken in the French capital in 1913. Many works by Shinzo were lost during the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923 and, though he kept on taking pictures (in the 30s he travelled to China where he photographed the tourist destination of the West Lake at Hangzhou) and was involved in artistic projects, unfortunately he didn’t have too much time to pursue his artistic career as he soon became the president of the Shiseido Pharmacy and decided to shift the focus of the company from pharmaceuticals to cosmetics.
Shinzo’s younger brother Roso focused instead on photography and concentrated on developing a modernist taste, taking images of trees, objects and rooftops.
One of my favourite images by Roso portrays a Hanatsubaki or “camellia flower”, the symbol of Shiseido’s logo and also the title of the company’s in-house cultural magazine.
If you want to know more about the Fukuhara brothers, try the book Shinzo and Roso Fukuhara - Photographs By Ginza Modern Boys 1913-1941
by Noriko Fuku.
After Shinzo Fukuhara died in 1948 his artistic inspirations and his motto "Everything must be rich" were applied to the company's products.
I guess the launch of this new product proves that Shiseido is well aware of the “lipstick effect” in our times of crisis, a phenomenon financial experts trace back to the 1930s Great Depression when sales of cosmetics rose while the industrial production halved.
Apart from that, the company also knows that, today’s women, like the late 20s flappers, are in search of a new and up-to-date stylish confidence and the right lipstick can definitely help achieving it. Now can we have a Shiseido make-up range with cases featuring the Fukuhara brothers' photographs?
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