Birthing beauty
July 8, 2005 | 12:00am
What are five people, who don’t use cosmetics, doing working for one of the biggest make-up brands in the world? It began with a call – namely from wunderkind and top cheerleader for Shu Uemura in the country, Tina Tinio. Apparently, she had heard of our rag-tag company of arrogant visual mercenaries called HG. Perhaps you’ve seen our work in the pages of YStyle or in glossies like Preview magazine (for which we brought the unlikely trio of Amanda Griffin, Georgina Wilson and Ronnie Lazaro together for one shoot). It was Preview’s editor-in-chief Pauline Suaco-Juan who suggested us and it came to pass that four of us found ourselves having dinner with Tina and getting googly-eyed over brochures and skin cleanser. It only took Tina one glance at my skin to tell me that I needed "catharsis on the skin."
Tina had for a time lived in Japan and told us about hana-mi, a sort of one-week festival in which every Japanese from the elderly to your average salaryman would just sit, drink and watch the cherry blossoms while they were in bloom. Somehow the thought of all those people stopping everything and just looking at these flowers (which last only a week) struck me as the perfect metaphor for makeup in general.
Like the cherry blossoms, make-up is ephemeral — only lasting a few hours before fading away. No doubt that art of makeup hinges on its being able to plant an imprint of its beauty that blossoms even further in one’s memory. Rather, its beauty bases most of its allure because like anything else it is temporary, that it is wiped away and discarded on wads of cotton in the rubbish. Thus, we see the importance of the cleansing oil.
Of course, I really don’t know what I’m talking about – being an idiot whose concept of facial cleansing is limited to Safeguard soap.
With that in mind, the group began work. My wife, Yvonne, designed all the premium items i.e. a bag, a brooch and a bracelet. Each can be worn separately or can be combined like the Constructicons in Transformers. Once that was completed, Juan, our photographer, decided that he wanted to shoot them as if they were suspended in mid-air (he usually gets Kung Fu and the Yakuza confused). Good thing, my trusty driver, Buboy, is – despite his heterosexuality – is quite enamored of hair and was developing with Yvonne the concept of "hair sculptures". Our stylist, Mads, added an extra flourish of organza-blossoms and – voila! – we had a fantastic image to match Tina’s enthusiasm.
For the product launch at The Drawing Room, we made an installation that somehow approximated all the visual ideas we were tossing up. The only hitch being that the dry-ice we had ordered failed to live up to its purpose and so we were deprived of the final touch to give an air of fog like in Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood. No matter, I took all the credit (or blame) for the work during the launch because the other four decided to bail due to lack of sleep and any semblance of social skills.
Why am I telling you all this?
It’s my way of explaining where this column has been for the past couple of weeks. You gotta understand, writing don’t pay much and I’ve got a box of earthworms to feed.
Also catch Ato Bautista’s Sa Pakakagising Mula Sa Kamulatan and Mario Cornejo’s and Coreen Jimenez’s Big Time. Those are the only two I’ve seen so far and they’re very good indeed.
Send comments and reactions to erwin_romulo@hotmail.com.
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