On Monday, 27-year-old makeup brand Laura Mercier makes its first backstage New York Fashion Week appearance, as the brand seeks to align itself more prominently as an artistry cosmetics brand.
The heritage beauty brand will go backstage at the Altuzarra show on Monday to show off to potential new consumers its iconic “Flawless Face” makeup look, made popular in the 1990s. The brands came together based on their founders’ connection over a shared professional background, both focused on the professional arts. Altuzarra studied art and art history in college, while Mercier studied painting and drawing in Paris.
The Laura Mercier brand was acquired from parent company Shiseido, alongside Buxom and BareMinerals, by private equity firm Advent International in Dec. 2021 for $700 million. Advent houses the three brands under the standalone business Orveon. At the time of the acquisition, industry sources said the three brands together did around $650 million in annual sales, according to WWD.
“Our overall intention at New York Fashion Week ties into our plans to build on our strong product foundation to elevate, modernize and sharpen the overall brand positioning,” said Diane Kim, global president of Laura Mercier. “We’re evolving from a product-focused proposition to a more holistic, brand-based proposition that has a clear point of view anchored in a heritage of artistry.”
Altuzarra’s spring 2024 collection is inspired by the elegance of French New Wave cinema and its common rhetorical duality of bourgeois life and its rebellious and dark underbelly. Duality is a frequent motif of Altuzarra’s, which he said is a result of his French and Chinese-American heritage and never fully fitting into either culture. The show’s mood will be about sensuality and strength, tempered by suspense and dread.
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“Laura Mercier is a brand I’ve always gravitated toward. Her approach to beauty complements my approach to design and fashion,” said Altuzarra. “[From my point of view] a lot of what Laura Mercier is about is sublimating a woman — turning her into the leading role in her own movie and making her feel the most like herself. What our clothes do is similar. We never want the clothes to overshadow a person, but [instead, we hope to] highlight what our customers want to emphasize.”
The focus on artistry is key to Laura Mercier’s amplified positioning in the global cosmetics market. Kim said she does not consider the brand to be undergoing a revamp or relaunch because its heritage and point of view remain the same. Instead, more effort is being made to clearly connect the dots between the brand and what it stands for, and to modernize its legacy for newer consumers. Since the Advent acquisition, Laura Mercier has ventured into the metaverse, in Dec. 2022, and launched new complexion products, in Feb. 2023. Laura Mercier plans to be present again at Altuzarra’s show in Feb. 2024, for fall 2024, by creating and applying makeup looks for the models on the runway.
In addition to the Altuzarra moment, Laura Mercier developed a three-part makeup tutorial series with Vogue.com tailored around NYFW. The makeup looks were developed by Mercier herself along with the brand’s global makeup artist, Tayaba Jaffri. The series spotlights the brand’s range of color cosmetics alongside its hero products, like the Translucent Loose Setting Powder and Tinted Moisturizer.
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Kim declined to share specific investment figures around the Altuzarra partnership but clarified that an agreement was signed with Altuzarra regarding responsibilities like payment for makeup artist contractors and travel.
“The beauty industry is cyclical, and it goes through phases. But it all comes back around. This is why it’s the time for Laura Mercier herself and the brand to have an even bigger voice out there and to stake a claim,” said Kim.
