In conjunction with Gucci’s reimagined beauty line, Gucci Beauty, the brand recently launched a new Instagram account (@GucciBeauty). The account isn’t quite what you’d expect, though—there aren’t any flat lay images of new products or close-ups of models wearing the brand’s latest makeup looks. Instead, the account has only posted images of famous paintings.
The Gucci Beauty Instagram account is meant to reflect creative director Alessandro Michele’s vision of beauty. What looks like an art history appreciation page is actually a clever component to Gucci’s Art of Beauty campaign.
According to Elle, Gucci had five art writers give detailed backgrounds on classic artwork pulled from places all over the world like the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. So far, Gucci Beauty has posted 26 art pieces. Each post highlighted beauty elements in the paintings, such as the curled hair, red lips, and skin tone, as well as beauty practices from around the world. The artworks spanned across several different cultures, ethnicities, and eras. The Art of Beauty campaign is meant to show the evolution and preservation of beauty ideals throughout the ages.
“Beauty represents an ideal of each place and era, a style that the artist felt was worth preserving. Sometimes it meant high hairlines and high collars, like Elizabethan England, but it can also be native woman’s simple blouse from an 1876 portrait by painter Felipe Santiago Gutierrez, one of the first international Mexican artists,” the Gucci Beauty website reads.
The account featured works like “Woman From Constantinople” by Jean-Léon Gérôme, “Portrait of Maria de’ Medici” by Agnolo Bronzino, and “Woman at Toilette” by Hashiguchi Goyo. Their post about “Woman from Constantinople,” for example, cites the woman’s veil as “nod to her exotic origins” and a way to draw attention to her soft gaze and smile.
The brand has been inspired by art for other campaigns, as well. On their main Instagram account, Gucci posted several photos of Harry Styles, who is the face of their Gucci Cruise 2019 Men’s Tailoring campaign, wearing Michele’s latest sartorial designs. In each photo, Styles wore the 16th-century-style suit—and held an adorable farm animal. The photos were shot at the Renaissance gardens of the Villa Lante near Rome.
It looks like Gucci’s new #aesthetic is art history. What do you think of the Gucci Beauty account so far? Are you loving their page? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!
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