While we were at New York Fashion Week, we were lucky enough to attend the preview of Solve Sundsbo's video installation The Ever Changing Face of Beauty, created in partnership with Stefano Tonchi's W Magazine and P&G Prestige. The film was attended by A-listers including Cate Blanchett, Sienna Miller, Diane Von Furstenberg and Coco Rocha
Photo: W Magazine
The hypnotic film shows the buxom buck-toothed Lara Stone morphing into Andrej Pejic's gender bending look, then to Liu Wen's uber sleek look, the film explore the cultural perception and gender lines that define what makes something beautiful.
Did Lara realize she was making a cultural statement when she agreed to participate? "To be honest it was just a job, when Solve first explained what was happening, it was hard to imagine what he was getting at," she told us standing in front of the six-metre screens playing the film. "But seeing myself today post-production and on these enormous screen it all makes sense. Everyone thinks that a beauty ideal is something objective, but the idea of perfection is something that evolves and changes all the time".
"It's about the shifting nature of beauty today", Tonchi explained, "we wanted to explore the idea of beauty as some that's subjective and in a constant state of flux."
To Joanne Crewes, President, P&G Global Prestige, it reflects the way that beauty trends are evolving today.
"The world is getting smaller thanks to technology – but that doesn't mean that things have become homogenized and generic, instead there's a lot more learning from other cultures in terms of rituals and traditions."
Photo: W Magazine
And what are the global beauty trends that we can expect in 2012? "The important of fragrance as a way of uplifting moods is a big focus, and for skincare it's all about improving tonality and the flawless nature of skin", Crewes predicts. "We're also seeing a new focus on male beauty products. This is something that we're definitely seeing in places like South Korea, where the thinking is that 'skin is the mark of a man – that's something we expect to see travelling from East to West.'"