French beauty giant L’Oréal and the Louvre Museum in Paris have announced a three-year partnership.
The pairing aims to shine a light on the connections between art and beauty, and a new tour explores the idea further with key works in the famed art collection.
According to WWD, “De Toutes Beautés!” (“Of All Beauties!”) takes in 108 works and looks at the ways in which we perceive beauty, the rituals we undertake in pursuit of it, and how they have changed over the course of history, as represented in art.
The works encompass 10,00 years of history across diverse cultures, from Greece to Iraq and Italy. Beauty rituals like bathing, hair styling and applying fragrance have long been central to culture and counter culture as well as our daily routines.
The works are said to have been selected to shine a light on the diversity and subjectivity of beauty.
A team from the Louvre, alongside Delphine Urbach, director of art, culture and heritage at L’Oréal, selected the works to be featured.
They include masterpieces like ‘Sleeping Hermaphrodite’, an ancient Rome marble sculpture depicting Hermaphroditus, sculptures of St Mary Magdalene, ancient Greek god Hermes and beauty tools such as the wooden-and-ivory “Spoon in the Shape of a Swimmer Holding a Duck,” that dates from about 1390 to 1352 B.C. in Egypt, and may have been used to scoop makeup.
The tour will take you through the museum using an app, guided by QR codes, though selected works can also be explored online. The tour will explain the works in relation to beauty, beyond their original descriptions.
The beauty giant and the iconic museum were first connected in August 2023 with the release of a limited makeup collection (above) for Lancôme inspired by masterpieces of sculpture held at the Louvre. There is no word on potential new product additions as a result of the newly announced partnership.
De Toutes Beautés! opens to the public on November 13, and is expected to run at the Louvre until March 2027.
