Estee Lauder and their 1984 not so primitive worlds after all

To follow up with Elizabeth Ardens makeup fall/winter 1984 Colour Play makeup collection, we are on to Estee Lauder´s fall/winter 1984 Primitive Worlds. Back in Belgium, in 1984 and my high school days, Estee Lauder was like the exotic imported expat that had settlend on the traditional and conservative mainland Europe – the Continent. The Continent was rich with classical, traditional and very insistingly French, Belgian luxury brands who took their wine, bread and perfume with great seriousness.

Even though I was intrigued with curiousity, I never thought about even strolling to an EL counter. For one, I was dead loyal to Elizabeth Arden (in my legue sort of) and second if I were to veer to something else it had to be French like Lancome, Dior or the even more cult spheres of Bourjois, Stendahl, Payot or the like. But from afar, it did peak my curiousity, in particualar the seasonal colour stories. It was only when I became much older that I actually contemplated going up to one of their counters to look, test, smell and then finally buy something.

But the colour story from Estee Lauder at that time was 1984 Primitive Worlds. The only thing I own from that collection is an ad, and luckily its quite good quality. I have no idea what the makeup and colours itself look like and I have no idea how large the collection was.

The ad says nothing about the colours in the collection, nor the amount of pieces it had and what they were. But we do have some hints. The model is Willow Bay (Estee Lauder house model at the time 1983 – 1989) and the photographer is the infamous Viktor Skrebneski. One of the traits from the ads back then, is that they could provide you some info on the makeup, sometimes less and sometimes more and the clothes/jewelry worn by the model.

Alas, I have not kept any old makeup from that time either – who would have thought that something as simple as makeup concepting and quality would be so hard to come by these days (!!) – so I have nothing to show other than brochures I have kept that show what the compacts and design looked like. I have one vintage Re-Nutriv lipstick left that I will show in a later post.

But when searching and browsing the internet for the sake of desperately trying to find out what the collection actually looked like – I came across an article on brunoclaessens.com that was written on Oct 6th 2020, titled “Oceanic and African art in an Estee Lauder advertisement (Fall 1984). In that article he can tell us that the model is posing with “a large Nafana bedu mask, a fragmentary Korewori spirit figure, and Abelam bark painting, a Vanuata headdress, an Oro Province tapa from Papua new Guinea and a Fang ngil mask from Gabon.” Wow – ok, I have never heard of all these types of art, but it sure does not sound primitive. Yes, I know what they are talking about, but this reads for more than your average national gallery museum goer.

The article not only stops with that, the article is updated with Maureen Zarember comments on the “model wearing my huge Nagaland necklace, and new cosmetic colors/lipstick same color as the lipstick”. And then she adds in her comments that “today, companies hires an army to do that work, not Esteé, she was so hands…”.

So, yes we do have some hints. But I’m mostly taken aback about the simplicity, thought-provoking and inspirationally well executed the whole concept was/is (cause I can still see it thank god). Imagine a setting of a woman all dressed up in a sort of contemporary concept today and that tells a story about who we are and what we want to do today. Would it be in your living room watching Netflix – would it be waiting in line for the bus head down staring at your phone? Or would it be sitting in front of you computer all dressed up just on your top half and PJ’s on the bottom for a Teams meeting in your home office?

What about the colour in this story?

Old adds, iphones, and the objective lense makes it very difficult to make out colours accurately here. But what I do see with the naked eye, was that the eyeshadow must have been colourful – you can clearly see a purple at the corner of the eyes picking up the purple scarf. And then the golden/mustard transition shade matching the purple perfectly.

The lipstick and nail polish though is obviously some sort of brick. Variations of brick red was readily seen in lipstick and nail polish done at that time. Brick red, being obviously brick, is a warm colour. What I find so fascinating with this colour is that it is not a flat colour – it’s tinged with blue, surface smooth and turns into a corally-brick red colour. Just like the necklace. The necklace also has some brown finishes at the edges, making it appear earthier – closer to the ground and what you find in primitive nature?! During that time the lipliner Apple Cordial featured in a lot of their stories, also a rusty/brickish red and still in production today.

I obviously have no idea on how intentional this concept was – a fluke or months of meticulous work. But, it inspires. I’d rather be depicted in a museum of any sorts rather being photographed sitting elaborately dressed and made up watching Netflix!