A Beautiful Truth
To remember the man who’s aim was to fix our look. And If you've got a penchant for looking your best at any phase in life, embrace it. Given that the fickle and fashionable industries of clothing and cosmetics adverts persuade, younger is better, is a myth. Youthfulness has had its moment.
Photograph Thomas Branconier
This piece stems from some work I did in fashion and beauty, where looks, posture and perfection, have a part to play in ones success. But some of the industries stiff demands are slowly on there way out. Below, I take a look forward to an attractive future.
The world of fashion and beauty, with technology shaping its search and reach, is very slowly but surely, setting its sights on older gentlemen and ladies.
Side-stepping the misleading show on being forever young, plump with creaseless skin, celebrating and glorifying, perpetuating the promise of never getting old and ugly, seeing that we do get old, but we don’t get ugly.
Therefor, ageing promises to bring our past to present, as in a photograph, our diverse character shuttered in position, front and centre. A reminder to celebrate who we were, but also how we were able to continue and to highlight and to renew ourselves, physically and metaphysically.
Not only can we do this with food. Music. Books. Pets. Friends. Fashion. Love. Lovers. Art. Science. Omnipotent beings and so on. But also because of one man and his vision, to enhance our look.
Founder of Max Factor & Company, Maxsymillian Faktorowicz (September 1877–1938) brought Hollywood cosmetics, make-up, gave actors (and models) a way to showcase their beauty and beast, identity and sexual prowess.
But these powders and potions that transformed actors into Hollywood starlets and Hollywood hunks, masculine or feminine, or any other energy in between, benefited all of us, too.
To temporarily go back, pause or go forward in time, to turn ourselves into bodies of interestingness.
You ask, how about our beauty on the inside? L.R. Heartston can answer that. Real beauty isn’t about ‘design’. It emerges from somewhere deep within.
This beautiful truth is why we must remember Max Factor. He gave us a way, and the tools, to express our fluid identities. But not just our exterior artistry. For our style to flower within and expressed outwardly, in any which way we please, and at every stage of age we reach.
This article was inspired by Angelo Gallamini a fashion designer and Rodolphe von Blon a mature fashion model.