Entrepreneur, mother, make-up artist, environmentalist, Instagram star… Guerlain’s new creative director of make-up is a palette of a thousand shades in herself. Meet.
A fragile flower name for a colorful personality… Without make-up electron Violet Serat is nature as they say. After a remarkable career at Dior and Estée Lauder, the young woman found love and settled in New York, where she created her own brand, Violette_fr, which is visibly flourishing. With her bangs, her red-and-red rose mouth (a red-and-black rose mouth she spotted in the Bagatelle gardens), her radiant face, her truthful speech and her 467,000 Instagram followers, the Parisian beauty stands out as a world icon. French touch. Now pregnant with her second daughter, Violette splits her life between the Big Apple and Paris, where, at 33, she brings her energy and love of color to Guerlain makeup. In his bright office-workshop behind La Samaritan, we picked up a few secrets.
In the video, Angelina Jolie, the star of the Mon Guerlain perfume campaign
Miss Figaro.–What exactly does your job consist of?
Violet: – I look a bit like a designer, but with beauty. I imagine collections, colors, textures. Also, I wear makeup. More accessible, cheaper than fashion, makeup has a real impact on mental health and the relationship we have with ourselves. I have seen women transform and reveal themselves with just red lipstick. It is very strong. To me, makeup isn’t about telling yourself “I’m getting better” or “I’m taking this off or that.” It’s a way of expression, a celebration, and if I can help people, in my small way, feel a little better, I’ll be happy. My desire is to remember that no one is perfect and that thanks to beauty you can be your own artist and muse. This is close to my heart. I like this quote from author Rainbow Rowell. “She was never pretty. He looked like a work of art. Art has nothing to do with beauty. it exists to experience things.”
And who is Violet the woman?
I am first and foremost a mother, but also a hardworking and passionate person. Obsessed with color. A little rebellious. I don’t like to follow established paths.
Was makeup a profession for you?
No way. I don’t care much about the product as such, but I can talk for hours about the color, the texture… I drive chemists crazy. It creates lifelong bonds between me and them. Actually, I wanted to become an artist. Very young, I took courses, summer in the south of France. I discovered the magic of pigments, how to mix them, create materials. Then, at the Ecole du Louvre, I learned to draw academically. I also wanted to become a fashion designer. I studied for a year and could not make a decision. One day, for a party, I made a friend and it felt like putting on a face… I saw all my passions combined into one. I didn’t want to go to makeup school. I don’t know if my technique is very “Catholic”, but I’ve always instinctively worked that way. I like to study. I know very well what I don’t know. If you work very hard and have enough humility to ask for help, enough strength and enough self-confidence, then anything is possible. The proof! If they told me one day that I would start my business in the USA and work for a French beauty flagship, I wouldn’t have believed it. I often say to the new generation of makeup artists that I meet. “There are no secrets. Success does not happen because one is creative or artistic. You have to work!” I am constantly learning.
Thanks to beauty, one can be one’s own artist and muse
Violet, Creative Director of Guerlain Makeup
Regret, painting?
I don’t miss him because every day I do what I love. I recently came across some pictures I used to take in my 20s. Actually, I didn’t like working on a flat support. For me, a person is not an empty canvas at all. Each of them inspires me and is a muse, even a model. I need to know who he is, talk to him. That’s why I don’t always know in advance what I’m going to do. But when I retire, with my vegetable garden in Provence, we’ll see…
Today’s Violette splits her time between New York and Paris, her brand and Guerlain. Isn’t it too hard to manage everything?
I admit that it is not easy. I’m a very present mom, very invested. So I work on Zoom late at night. I talk about it a lot with my husband, who tells me that it’s the quality, not the quantity, of the time I spend with my daughter, that it doesn’t matter if I miss one morning routine or not. don’t pick him up from school. Great advice, but you are still a prisoner of your past. We try to fill in what we missed, and I run after my own stories. But I’m making progress. I started babysitting in New York.
Where do you get your energy from?
I’m so passionate about what I do and I’m so happy mentally that I’m moving forward even though it’s physically difficult. When I see all these perfect moms on social media, doing everything meticulously, their work, yoga at 5 in the morning, green juice… I know it is false, but unconsciously we put pressure on ourselves. Especially in the US where there is this performance culture. Fortunately, I have the French woman in me that tells me that success lies elsewhere. I’m “settled”, but I don’t want to wake up one morning exhausted. At Guerlain, they are very respectful of their commitment to me. From the beginning, they knew that I had my stamp, my family, that I wouldn’t leave New York… They gave me a lot of freedom.
Maison Guerlain, you dreamed it.
Honestly, not at all. For me, this brand represented French heritage, a very special luxury house, but I wasn’t projecting myself. And then, it’s a bit like a love story. When they came to pick me up, at first I said no. I even offered to help them find one. And then, I felt really wanted, I realized that they wanted me to share their vision and their values. It touched me deeply. Then I discovered this house, its history… Which is so incredible, rich and modern. I didn’t know, for example, that Guerlain created the first wooden lipsticks. And in their time, terracotta and meteorites were revolutionary. Guerlain is truly haute couture beauty. Meeting people, reviewing the past, I was overwhelmed. I told myself I couldn’t say no.
What are you going to do with this legacy?
I’m not here to change things. Nor to watch what others are doing. Everything is already there. Guerlain will always be modern if we rely on its history. I don’t want to misrepresent the products. Just make them more up-to-date as formulas and technologies are constantly evolving. And then, bring on my color vision.
Source: Le Figaro
