Tyen’s artistic BLUE stroke in Dior Makeup CollectIon fall 1984; les secrets

After some flying and cooking, we are back in fall of 1984 again. This time, visiting the Christian Dior counter or rather my mother visiting the Dior counter and me tagging along. We already saw that Elizabeth Arden was doing their Colour Plays, Estee Lauder was in their Primitive Worlds and we (my mom and I) wondered what Tyen would create this time. A few other cosmetics counters also did seasonal colour stories, like Lancome with L’invitation au voyage featuring Isabella Rosellini and I believe Helena Rubenstein, YSL also did some. Chanel had barely started their beauty line and hadn’t really followed suit in that way.

Christian Dior is rather late to the party as far as makeup and skincare is concerned. The Mrs’s Lauder, Rubenstein and Arden had decades of a head start in the industry before the fashion houses got their act around. As a fashion house Dior has necessarily deemed as being “non-serious” player in the beauty field. According to lvmh.com , Dior started with the first Rouge Dior lipstick in 1949. (article featuring their new book “The art of Color”) In 1967 they hired Serge Lutens as Creative Director for Makeup and Image and then Tyen in 1980. A position that Tyen held until 2014 – that is 34 years! Both Serge Lutens and Tyen (does he have a last name or is it his first?!) have very detectable styles. Serge Luten’s artistic hand can aslo be seen in his work for Shiseido. The ironic thing, is that I always thought that Serge Lutens had a very “asian” stroke to his beauty imagery where in fact Serge is very French. But Tyen, Vietnamese native ie an asian, had a very “french” hand in his work as we can see in his Dior beauty creations.

But anyway, Tyen reigned as Christian Dior’s makeup artist for decades and his style is very easy to recognize from afar. I have a couple of Dior makeup brochures still well and alive from that time. You easily see a common theme – a face, framed by something, flowers, cloths, shawls or whatever, good display of colours in eyes, lips and cheeks. Unlike the colour stories from competitive brands, it is very difficult to say where this woman actually is and what she is doing. She could be home watching Nexflix for all we know. So lifestyle settings was not something you would find in Dior beauty campaigns.

But if not lifestyle displays, what would we find? The theme for fall/winter is called Les Secrets. Nothing telling or special about that. The ad displays 3 very season appropriate and wearable lipstick and matching nail shades, 2 eyeshadow pallets and some mascara. Pretty standard and uninspiring?! Depends. When you think about Dior being a fashion house, then they want to be recognized for their haute couture, unique artistry and innovation. That means that they also want to display the most inventive, unique shades and creative ways of using makeup to match their outfits! With Tyen, I see an artist at work – he is working off his colour pallete and using a face as a canvas. What better way to display colours – your face enveloped in the latest creations of a couture house! All joking aside, I think that was what the allure of Christian Dior was all about – the finest display of a parissian haute couture and then translated into makeup.

Out of curiosity I compared Christian Dior eyeshadow cases 40 years apart. Personally, I prefer the much handier smaller 40 year old case compared to today’s version. When it comes to the colours within the 40 year eyeshadow palette , I will share in a later post.

What about the colour in this story?

A couple of years later, Dior ventured on to marketing coloured hair mascaras. I don’t think they were a hit. Longevity a huge problem on rainy days. But coloured mascaras has stuck around 40 years later, blue being kind of harmless compared to a pink or even red that we have seen in lately in some brands. So Les Secrets, well, not so secretive any longer… not as far as coloured mascara is concerned.