Nars Attacks

Renowned makeup artist and cosmetics-company tycoon François Nars has never been one to latch onto blue-eyed, blonde-haired notions of conventional beauty. Rather, he blazed a trail by featuring a very young, then-unheard-of Alek Wek in the first campaign for his makeup line in 1996 and has since developed a reputation for celebrating the idiosyncratic, showcasing such offbeat beauties as Karen Elson (1997) and Daphne Guinness (2010). This May, Nars is taking his eccentric sensibilities to the page with Makeup Your Mind: Express Yourself, a cosmetics how-to highlighting 60 men and women plucked from the Manhattan sidewalks. The book—art directed by Interview’s editorial director Fabien Baron—is divided into three sections: “Play,” “Perfect,” and “Polish, ”and addresses what Nars calls the “everyday needs” of women in their twenties, thirties, and beyond. Expect a parade of transformed subjects and a party to match this spring at Nars’ newly opened flagship boutique.