The new Fafi collection by Mac Cosmetics, which we made an announcement about earlier (see picture of collection), is loaded with popular culture references and as usual is chock-full of colors. The tints in fact are much more vivid than appear on the pictures and then again some of them, like the fluo pink color in the tube Totally It, look all reasonable once applied.
Cultural Notes: Origins of the Fafinettes
The universe of the collection is that of Fafi, a French artist and cartoonist who draws her initial inspiration from intersecting cultural traditions where characters present a mix of traits usually found separately as characteristic of babies, little kids or gamins in the French tradition, and sexually mature adults. She herself simply likes to stress that she draws her inspiration from her friends and girls she observes on the street. It was her dream to have her drawings on makeup packaging and they look great on the Mac line. One would have just wished that there were more of them on the lipstick cases for example instead of the same character being repeated over and over.
Soonie's Rose by Margaret Keane
One can identify in her universe a trend deriving from the prevalent Kawaisa (cuteness) culture in Japan with its references to the Anime and Manga aesthetics but also closer to home for Fafi, the Poulbot sub-culture in France. Finally coming full circle one discovers the influence of the Big-Eye Movement born in the USA, an expression made popular by Wayne Hemingway in his book Just Above The Mantelpiece: Mass-Market Masterpieces. In it he attributes the birth of this inspiration to Margaret (and Walter as a pseudo) Keane in North Beach San Francisco California at the end of the 1950s. However, it must be stressed that Poulbot already drew gamins with oversized eyes. Keane's "large-eyed waif" paintings were beloved by actress Joan Crawford who collected them and had one made of her for decorating her home. Big eyes are typical of this cultural sensitivity, so much so that in Japan young women try to imitate the enormous eyes of Animes by wearing lenses that dilate the pupils and make the eyes seem more like tea saucers, an ideal of beauty that can be more easily achieved with a white pencil liner (see Fafi: Fascinating: Snake-eyes Matte White Eye Khol cf. press release)....
Fafi street art
Continue reading "Mac Fafi Collection: Lips & A Bit of Cheek, The Reviews Part 1 {Beauty Notes & Reviews}" »
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