Chanel COMETES COLLECTIVE

The success of Gabrielle Chanel is the story of a unique rendezvous between talent and destiny: a visionary spirit emboldened by fortuitous encounters. Her born talent could only match her impeccable style for inspired conversations—ongoing creative dialogues that define the ethos of the House to this day.

Often paradoxical, the art of the creative encounter is as elegant as bold. It is the force that unites feminine and masculine, simplicity and luxury, present and future, the familiar and the unknown, technical expertise and spectacular dreams, timelessness and innovation, black and white.

What is beauty if not the story of many transformative encounters? Beauty is where shape meets the color, and shadow meets light. It is a dance between matter and illusion, between one’s imagination and reality, and between a woman and the destiny she defines for herself.

At CHANEL, beauty is the story of a sacred trinity: singularity, allure, and the act of becoming. It is an infinite journey nourished by the past, rooted in the present moment, and looks boldly toward the future.

Driven by its innate appetite for creative exchange, CHANEL is pleased to present the COMETES COLLECTIVE, a group of emerging talents shaping the future of beauty. With the COMETES COLLECTIVE, the CHANEL Makeup Creation Studio accelerates its creative momentum, leveraging the power of diversity by empowering multiple points of view. This innovative and inclusive concept opens a new realm of possibility at the CHANEL Makeup Creation Studio.

As of October 2022, this collective of rising stars will begin to shine, each working in her own way to expand CHANEL’s palette of colors and shades, reinterpret icons, and reinvent and enrich the House’s creative language. Theirs is the art of dreaming, creating, and redefining the role makeup plays and will play in our lives.

Each member of this collective has been chosen for their vibrant and singular vision of beauty and their values that resonate with those of CHANEL. Together, they will add a pioneering new chapter to the House’s tradition of exploring how women see themselves. Each artist will bring their unique vision, authoring their seasonal collections and working together on shared releases.

The spirit of transmission and collaboration is alive as ever at the House of CHANEL, and it is at the heart of the COMETES COLLECTIVE. Galvanized by mutual inspiration and shared expertise, they will engage in a colorful, creative dialogue that will only grow richer over time, with new talents and perspectives joining the conversation. The COMETES COLLECTIVE is a tribe of independent thinkers united by the conviction that beauty comes from the freedom to be and to become yourself in all your richness, complexity, and nuance.

By creating this community of emerging talents, the CHANEL Makeup Creation Studio follows in the entrepreneurial footsteps of Gabrielle Chanel, often revolutionary and always at the service of an iconic style that defines its time.

Inspired by their respective trajectories and driven by a shared passion for collaboration, Ammy Drammeh, Cécile Paravina, and Valentina Li are the first artists to join the COMETES COLLECTIVE.

The House is proud to partner with these artists, the deserving recipients of international acclaim for their creativity, their expertise, and their free and authentic visions of beauty. With the support of the CHANEL Makeup Creation Studio, they will contribute to the development of new collections and imagine inspiring content for CHANEL makeup lovers.

Having already embarked on this exciting new chapter, the House will reveal the first COMETES COLLECTIVE collections in January 2024.

The COMETES COLLECTIVE breathes new life into the CHANEL art of makeup, shifting paradigms of beauty by amplifying new voices. The birth of the COMETES COLLECTIVE reflects a new creative and visionary chapter at the heart of the CHANEL Makeup Creation Studio, written in the present while paying homage to the past, in keeping with the core values of the House.

As of fall 2022, the creation of the House’s makeup collections will fall in the hands of many. It will be nourished by the stories of a plurality of women and men and fuelled by a diverse abundance of inspiration. A veritable explosion of individual desires and skills will form it.

These words resonate stronger than ever within the walls of the CHANEL Makeup Creation Studio. Ammy Drammeh, Cécile Paravina, and Valentina Li, the first three artists to join the COMETES COLLECTIVE as Global Creative Makeup Partners, were chosen for their unique talents and their ability to fuel the House’s ongoing conversation about beauty passionately.

AMMY DRAMMEH

A fan of Sade and Senegalese cuisine, Ammy Drammeh was further nourished by her big brothers’ preference for hip-hop music and the sounds of her mother’s radio. Today, she draws upon her rich cultural inheritance for inspiration, using it to fuel her creative transformation for her artistic endeavors. When asked about her mentors, Drammeh replies, ‘I had many mentors. I assisted incredibly talented makeup artists, and I learned valuable lessons from all of them. Being able to work with such diverse talent has shaped the way I work today. Their unique approaches to the craft have helped me find my own’. More recently, Drammeh became a mentor herself by joining Mentoring Matters. This initiative aims to establish equity and multiply opportunities in creative industries for Black and Asian candidates and other ethnic minorities.

Drammeh’s natural know-how and seemingly intrinsic talent for makeup is her creative signature—one that resonates with the values of the House and that she herself describes as ‘real, more than natural’. As Drammeh explains, her vision of makeup is ‘effortless with a twist… [her] style of makeup is a bit like that. It feels uncomplicated and free, but when you look closer, you can see the pauses, the accents, and the detail’. These subtleties align with those the CHANEL Makeup Creation Studio explores through its uniquely modern yet grounded vision of beauty. Drammeh’s talent for colour, mastery of texture, and unparalleled expertise when it comes to complexion rendered her an unmissable artistic collaborator in the eyes of the House. By playing with materials and colour, she is able to assert herself as a woman—to get to know herself and all her nuances—explains Drammeh. Her best beauty advice: ‘Don’t be afraid. Don’t limit yourself based on what trends and others think is right. Follow your instincts, play, and have fun!’

Such esteemed fashion and beauty publications as i-D, Dazed, Self Service, and Vogue are already familiar with Drammeh’s many talents. Her position at the heart of the COMETES COLLECTIVE represents a new framework for the process of creation: getting inspired by icons while redefining the meaning of beauty in a collective way, or ‘as a family’, according to its members.

When asked to describe her fellow COMETES in one word, she says ‘avant-garde’ for Valentina and ‘modern classic’ for Cécile.

The COMETES COLLECTIVE opens a whole new field of creative possibilities for the CHANEL Makeup Creation Studio. This initiative proves that the spirit of collaboration is alive as ever at the House of CHANEL, as is the perpetual redefinition of feminine allure.

Instagram: @ammydrammeh

CECILE PARAVINA

In 2019, Cécile Paravina joined Bryant Artists and has since collaborated with some of the biggest names in the industry, including Lea Colombo, Valentin Herfray, Paul Kooiker, Arnaud Lajeunie, Georgia Pendlebury, Elizaveta Porodina, Drew Vickers, and Charlotte Wales.

Following in the iconoclastic footsteps of her mentor Serge Lutens, Paravina is a true artist who, despite her young age, demonstrates a generous vision of beauty marked by intergenerational transmission. "My intention is always to give and to inspire, she explains".

A free spirit unencumbered by the conventions of mainstream beauty, which she abandons without caution or shame, Paravina quickly made a name for herself with her unapologetic creativity. She will freely revisit the shape of the eye, making an eyebrow disappear, or reinterpret the beauty of a smile in a totally unique and unexpected way. Her curious exploration of volume, her purity of a line, the originality of her forms—Paravina’s work is immediately distinguished by the originality of her gaze and her innovative technical approach.

In 2020, Paravina was elected to the British Council’s ‘NEW WAVE CREATIVES’ list, an annual roundup of the 50 most inspiring and innovative talents globally.

Convinced that confidence comes from experience, Paravina is always the first model on which she attempts her audacious looks, exploring the subtleties of her ideas in pursuit of a singular vision of beauty. Her makeup advice: ‘Wear what you would like to see on the street’.

For Paravina, ‘the future lies in creativity applied to innovation’. Her presence at the heart of the COMETES COLLECTIVE underscores the conviction espoused by the CHANEL Makeup Creation Studio that beauty is a language in perpetual evolution, at the service of an expression of beauty that belongs not just to a privileged few, but to many.

When asked to describe her fellow COMETES in one word, she says ‘philanthropic’ for Ammy and ‘free-spirited’ for Valentina.

The COMETES COLLECTIVE opens a whole new field of creative possibilities for the CHANEL Makeup Creation Studio. This initiative proves that the spirit of collaboration is alive as ever at the House of CHANEL, as is the perpetual redefinition of feminine allure.

Instagram: @cecileparavina

VALENTINA LI

This introduction bears significant weight, for it begins to explain why this young woman who speaks fluent English, Mandarin, Cantonese, and French, and who studied makeup in Beijing and Paris, has the unique ability to imagine whimsical, fantastical, and fabulously colorful worlds for her creative spirit to wander.

The experimental, non-conforming futurist is nonetheless profoundly inspired by the talent and stories of her elders, mentors, and makeup masters. Li describes her take on makeup as a long journey that flirts between [her] dreams, notebooks, blank canvases waiting to be painted, and finally, the transparency of skin’. She specifies that her creative process is guided by an uncompromising imperative: ‘To make what is old new again.’

This abundance of ideas and a rich inner world full of color and texture empowered Li to master the crafts of makeup and body art. A diligent worker, Li enjoys losing herself in search of inspiration… in pursuing that one defining detail that will trigger an avalanche of nuance. The artist of a perennial blue period is also deeply connected to nature, transporting imagery from both the invisible and visible spaces of the sea into the conception of her collections—much like Gabrielle Chanel’s early references to the coast of Deauville.

Li’s work has been featured in magazines such as Vogue US, Vogue China, Harper’s Bazaar, DAZED, ELLE, T Magazine, Madame Figaro, Wallpaper, L’Officiel, Grazia, Tush Magazine, Kingkong Magazine, and Modern Weekly.

When asked to describe her fellow COMETES in one word, she says ‘feminine’ for Ammy and ‘unique’ for Cécile.

The COMETES COLLECTIVE opens a whole new field of creative possibilities for the CHANEL Makeup Creation Studio. This initiative proves that the spirit of collaboration is alive as ever at the House of CHANEL, as is the perpetual redefinition of feminine allure.

Instagram : @valentina1121li

Source: Chanel press release

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