This fall, CHANEL announced an incredible new initiative in the world of CHANEL Beauty. Moving forward, the new makeup collections will be created by the CHANEL COMETES COLLECTIVE. This collection of talented beauty visionaries will bring their diverse talents to the CHANEL Makeup Creation Studio. Mixing the heritage of the House with their modern interpretations, the Collective will create new and inspiring content through individual collections and shared releases.
To learn about the first three talented individuals to make up the CHANEL COMETES COLLECTIVE, scroll down. Chosen for their raw talent and distinctive perspectives, each brings a vibrant vision of beauty that is unique and inspiring. Needless to say, I am incredibly excited to see what these three supremely talented young artists will bring to the CHANEL Makeup Creation Studio and their ensuing creations!
AMMY DRAMMEH
With her born elegance and brilliant smile, Ammy Drammeh gracefully embodies her mixed Spanish and Gambian heritage. After leaving her native Spain to settle in London, she began exploring her future as an artist in 2010. In 2018 and 2019, she made the British Fashion Council’s ‘NEW WAVE CREATIVES’ list, which celebrates the most innovative and inspiring young creative talents of the year.
Drammeh’s natural know-how and seemingly intrinsic talent for makeup is her creative signature—one that resonates with the values of the House and that she herself describes as ‘real, more than natural’. As Drammeh explains, her vision of makeup is ‘effortless with a twist… [her] style of makeup is a bit like that. It feels uncomplicated and free, but when you look closer, you can see the pauses, the accents, and the detail’. These subtleties align with those the CHANEL Makeup Creation Studio explores through its uniquely modern yet grounded vision of beauty.
Drammeh’s talent for colour, mastery of texture, and unparalleled expertise when it comes to complexion rendered her an unmissable artistic collaborator in the eyes of the House. By playing with materials and colour, she is able to assert herself as a woman—to get to know herself and all her nuances— explains Drammeh. Her best beauty advice: ‘Don’t be afraid. Don’t limit yourself based on what trends and others think is right. Follow your instincts, play, and have fun!’
VALENTINA LI
Blue. Blue. Blue. This is how Valentina Li prefers to define herself—one word and without unnecessary frills. Blue like the colour of her hair, her eyes, her nails, and every little charm hanging from her bag. Blue like the water that crosses her native Guangxi, a region located in southern Mainland China. When asked what she would choose an avatar, Li says ‘a blue jellyfish’ without hesitation.
This introduction bears significant weight, for it begins to explain why this young woman who speaks fluent English, Mandarin, Cantonese, and French, and who studied makeup in Beijing and Paris, has the unique ability to imagine whimsical, fantastical, and fabulously colourful worlds for her creative spirit to wander. The experimental, non-conforming futurist is nonetheless deeply inspired by the talent and stories of her elders, mentors, and makeup masters. Li describes her take on makeup as a ‘long journey that flirts between [her] dreams, notebooks, blank canvases waiting to be painted, and finally, the transparency of skin’. She specifies that her creative process is guided by an uncompromising imperative: ‘To make what is old new again’.
The artist of a perennial blue period is also deeply connected to nature, transporting imagery from both the invisible and visible spaces of the sea into the conception of her collections— much like Gabrielle Chanel’s early references to the coast of Deauville.
CÉCILE PARAVINA
After studying design at the prestigious Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, honorary Parisian Cécile Paravina decided to dedicate her career entirely to beauty. Her education in the culture of fashion and art history infuses her creations with sophistication and refinement, as demonstrated by her signature precision and keen eye for detail. Following in the iconoclastic footsteps of her mentor Serge Lutens, Paravina is a true artist who, despite her young age, demonstrates a generous vision of beauty marked by intergenerational transmission. ‘My intention is always to give and to inspire, she explains’.
A free spirit unencumbered by the conventions of mainstream beauty, which she abandons without caution or shame, Paravina quickly made a name for herself with her unapologetic creativity. She will freely revisit the shape of the eye, making an eyebrow disappear, or reinterpret the beauty of a smile in a totally unique and unexpected way. Her curious exploration of volume, her purity of a line, the originality of her forms—Paravina’s work is immediately distinguished by the originality of her gaze and her innovative technical approach.
For Paravina, ‘the future lies in creativity applied to innovation’. Her presence at the heart of the CHANEL COMETES COLLECTIVE underscores the conviction espoused by the CHANEL Makeup Creation Studio that beauty is a language in perpetual evolution, at the service of an expression of beauty that belongs not just to a privileged few, but to many.
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