I’ll admit something: I almost scrolled past this story. “Fashion house does makeup” isn’t exactly breaking news anymore , everyone’s doing it. What stopped me was the word “collaboration,” because Louis Vuitton’s makeup line, La Beauté, already exists. Pat McGrath has been its cosmetics creative director since last year. So what, exactly, were she and artistic director Nicolas Ghesquière collaborating on, if the line was already hers?
The answer turned out to be more interesting than I expected.
This isn’t a new product launch. It’s the first time the house has treated its own Monogram , the print that’s been quietly making Louis Vuitton recognizable from fifty feet away for 130 years , as raw creative material for makeup, rather than just packaging slapped on afterward. Two limited-edition eyeshadow palettes, in what the house is calling Monogram Dune and Monogram Infrarouge, alongside lipsticks and lip balms, all built around a single idea McGrath described plainly: most people want to wear both sides of themselves in one day. Soft beiges in daylight, a full smoky eye and stained red lip by nightfall.
What I actually love about this one is the packaging logic. The Monogram canvas on the outside of each palette isn’t decorative , it corresponds to the makeup inside, so the exterior becomes part of the actual creative concept instead of branding bolted on at the end. Louis Vuitton went a step further and built an entire micro-collection of leather goods around the makeup itself: lipstick pouches, mini vanity cases, all in the same canvas. A lipstick, suddenly, isn’t just a lipstick. It’s something you’re meant to house, carry, and display, the way you would any other Louis Vuitton object.
McGrath and Ghesquière have worked together backstage for years , she’s built runway looks for his collections long before either of them touched a lip liner for retail , and you can feel that shorthand in how unforced the whole thing reads. Neither one is borrowing the other’s language. They’re speaking one they’ve apparently already built.
The collection lands in China first, then online August 20, then in Louis Vuitton stores from August 27. McGrath’s already said this is only the beginning of the collaboration side of La Beauté , which, if this first drop is any indication, is genuinely worth paying attention to.
All images featured in this article are credited to owners . They are used for editorial and illustrative purposes only, with no commercial intent. All rights remain with their respective owners.
