Face to Face: Shiseido and the Manufacture of Beauty, 1900–2000

Face to Face explores how the production and use of cosmetics illuminates some of the amazing cultural, social, and aesthetic changes that have taken place over the last century. “Makeup is one means by which we can create or enhance identities, and Shiseido provides a particularly powerful lens through which we can see how this process has evolved. Not only is Shiseido a leading cosmetics company, but it is also—quite consciously—a cultural force, whose design department has from the very beginning promoted a modern life style, where the arts play an essential role. Shiseido’s spectacular graphics and product designs reveal just how much the visual and commercial arts have always borrowed from each other.”