Hermès Beauty displays a visual feast with its latest collection

Hermès Beauty's Gregoris Pyrpylis fell in love with make-up the way most of us did – young and getting ready for a party. For him, that specific moment came in 2004 when, on a lark, he asked a friend if he could try applying her make-up. Even though the results were, in his words, ‘a bit mixed up,’ he has since found his footing, relocating to Paris from his native Greece to become Tom Pecheux’s assistant, before being named the Hermès Beauty creative director in 2022.

A year on and Pyrpylis is about to launch Hermès Beauty’s latest collection, Le Regard. It is the fifth chapter in the brand’s beauty line, which began with Rouge Hermès lipsticks in 2020 and gradually expanded to include nail polishes, foundations and highlighters, blushes and, now, eye products.

Hermès Beauty: Le Regard collection

In their black, white and gold packaging designed (like the rest of the Hermès Beauty range) by Pierre Hardy, the new products look more like objets d’art, with the most eye-catching being the eyeshadow palettes. Their luminous colours range from a more traditional Hermès offering (an elegant caramel brown, a smoky black, a plum) to a few surprises (an electric blue, a flamingo pink, a punchy sea-foam green).

For Pyrpylis, this mixture of the standard and the unconventional was imperativeto creating a product that appealed to the Hermès customer. ‘We like to start by layering, which is a much easier approach. At times, you can have a very vibrant, very bold expression, if you feel like it. But then, at the same time, if you want something more natural, more organic and quiet, you can add a medium shade as a base, or take a bit of a darker colour into the roots of the lashes.’ The eyeshadows can be applied with a finger or one of the collection’s four brushes, made in lacquered wood.

The collection also includes a series of mascaras, in six shades, including emerald green, bright violet, deep blue and burgundy. Hermès is known for executing even the most minute details with unrelenting precision, and that extends to its beauty line. Every millimetre of the product is considered, as evidenced by the fact that even the base of the mascara applicator is designed to form a small H-shape. But this isn’t just a self-indulgent fancy. The best design marries aesthetics with functionality, and that little ‘H’ shape allows the applicator to uniformly hold just the right amount of product, so that every swipe goes on smooth and evenly.

For Pyrpylis, these whimsical yet practical details are essential to the ethos of Hermès Beauty. ‘I don’t want to impose a certain look on someone,’ he says. ‘I want them to amuse themselves and have a nice moment. Make-up shouldn’t feel like an obligation.’

This article appears in the November 2023 Art Issue of Wallpaper*, available in print, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today.

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