M.A.C. Toasts Industrial Designer Marcel Wanders’s New Beauty Collection

MAC & Marcel Wanders Collection

“If I have a basic motivation, it’s to inspire people to make their life a Masterpiece!” Is that not what we do every day at M·A·C? So it is that the Dutch industrial designer – known for everything from his “Happy Hour” Chandelier to his “futuresonic” way with old Delft porcelain, and for co-founding now-iconic design collective Droog AND the amusing, classicism-meets-futurism objects of his own group, Moooi (from the Dutch word for “beauty,” but with an extra “o” for extra-beautiful!) – wandered HERE…It had to be! M·A·C partners with Marcel Wanders – his first foray into the world of cosmetics – and design sophisticates (and people with innate and irreverent tastes) will be bonkers for these limited-edition Lipstick, Lip Gloss, Sheer Mystery Powder, Air of Style Scent Concentrate and his signature brush and clutch creations, not least of all for their arresting packaging – fine collectors’ items all! But also for the rich palette, inspired by 17th Century Flemish painting, and particularly Vermeer’s – “Girl With a Pearl Earring” – and the idea of an artist painting a portrait, and falling in love. “Always, with a sense of love in the product…” he says. Marcel speaks our M·A·C language.

 Black lacquered display stands, created by the artist to recall his new brush handles and lipstick cases for M.A.C., at last night’s celebratory dinner. Right, M.A.C. & Marcel Wanders Sheer Mystery Powder, $60, and Lipstick in Catharina, $22; 

M.A.C.& Marcel Wanders Brush, $75,Lip Gloss in Aleydis, $22, False Lashes in False Black, $18

The industrial designer Marcel Wanders has a confession to make: “I love watching people do their makeup on YouTube,” he says with a laugh. “It’s really kind of fun.” That may have a little something to do with his new beauty collaboration with M.A.C. cosmetics, which Wanders celebrated last night with a seated dinner at Scarpetta in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District. An eclectic group of guests, including Cecilia Dean, Lorenzo Martone, Richard Phillips, and Todd Eberle, nibbled on braised short ribs, duck–and–foie gras ravioli, and banana budino with pecan gelato while taking in Wanders’ sleek collection of black lacquered makeup accessories (out later this month). The antique-meets-modern carved lipstick tubes (which any fan of the designer’s will recognize from his recent chairs and tables for Cappellini), multifaceted powder compact, slim-handled makeup brush and talisman-like solid perfume concentrate, says Wanders, were inspired by fellow Dutchman Johannes Vermeer’s Girl With a Pearl Earring, which he found himself re-contemplating at The Hague last year. “I was thinking about him painting this girl,” he says of the seventeenth-century artist’s subject, “and about how before he painted her, she had actually painted herself.” The result is a collection of “simple artist’s tools that are also objects of pleasure”—made to turn the ritual of applying one’s makeup into something extraordinary. In the ultimate marriage of form and function, the entire collection can be tucked into a glimmering brocade brush roll which, if the reaction of Wanders’s party guests provided any indication, may just as easily double as a clutch.

M.A.C. and Marcel Wanders collection, November 24, at all M.A.C. locations and maccosmetics.com.