Brand Evaluation

 NARS Cosmetics is a brand founded by a great make up artist, photographer and author, Francois Nars, in 1994. Nars focuses on natural beauty, encouraging self expression and individuality and their idea is to enhance beauty, rather than masking it and hiding under make up. Throughout the past 20 years he has come up with some great products and they are all created to suit any skin tone and are given unordinary names which is one of the reasons why they are so well-known. The brand falls into the high-end make up cathegory, but is still affordable with the average price range between £20 and £40.

Going through the brand's history and different collections and looks I decided to base my looks around holidays and tropical islands with Abalone shells being my main inspiration.

When it comes to advertising, they keep it simple, clean and quite minimal. The images are usually highly contrasted, containing only a few colours. The brand's logo is clearly visible and the text is either short (product description, etc) or not there at all and the same goes for the product images. Taking that in consideration I have created an advert for the Dual Intesity Blush collection and the Audacious lipsticks. I used a wig that covered my model's eyes with the idea to focus the viewer's attention on the feature where the product had been applied. Their website contains many quotes said by Nars so I used them as a description, rather than using images of the products. I had written the shade of the product that the model is wearing, her name and the brand's website as that is what I have seen in most of their advertisments. The bckground is black which made the model's face stand out more while the colour of the background of where the logo and the text is, is a shade taken from the products on the image.

NARS does not have a fashion line to showcase in editorials, instead they showcase looks and recent products calling their editorials - advertorials. I thought the idea of advertorias was quite interesing so I based my looks on the Dual Intesity Eyeshadows which can be used wet and dry. I came up with a story of a 'Tahiti Holiday' where we see her looks throughout the day. The first look shows her beach, morning look: wet messy hair, bronzed skin and on her eyes we see what the eyeshadow looks when applied wet. The second and third look are meant to show her throughout the day, in two different dresses. The hair and make up are the same; very subtle eye make up; eyeshadow applied try, and a slicked low pony tail. I decided to go with that hairstyle as they usually tend to do that, so it does not hide the face.

The minimal and clean looks are best shown through the catwalk looks that they tend to do as they use a short list of products creating either very natural or bold looks. Inspired by the look created for the Creatures of the Wind SS16 show, I used silver metalic eyeshadow which links to the Abalone shells and applied glitter on the roots and down the two dutch braids, while my second look was very natural; fresh looking, sun-kissed skin.

I think that the looks I have created within this project capture the spirit of the brand and link to it quite well as I have researched it indepth which helped me to understand the essence of the brand.