Photo: Courtesy NARS
Beauty brand NARS has taken an unconventional route to selecting a face for its newest campaign, instead opting to create three virtual brand ambassadors. Launching today, the ‘Power Players’ are completely digital spokespeople, prompted by the brand’s Powermatte Lipstick launch. Each of the three ‘meta-humans’ was inspired by a different shade of lipstick, and come with their own tech-tinted career backstory: Maxine is a bleach blonde New York-based DJ, Chelsea is a digital artist in London who studied at Central Saint Martins. Sissi is a Shanghai digital fashion designer, who was an early adopter of NFTs – a meta concept itself.
Photo: Courtesy NARS
The designs were fleshed out by production pipeline Unreal Engine 5, with makeup by NARS Global Artistic Director Lena Koro, and styled by Patti Wilson. NARS Vice President of Global Digital Innovation and Strategy, Dina Fierro, tells Vogue Arabia that the AI ambassadors are hyper-realistic avatars that she hopes will reflect the consumers’ increasing usage and awareness of the metaverse and web3 environments. “As the virtual brand ambassadors are real-time metahuman characters, their personality attributes, backstories, and narratives will be key points of relatability for consumers around the world,” she explains. “We are always looking to further engage and inspire our NARS community and we anticipate the Power Players to unlock new opportunities to do so as consumer behavior evolves in emerging digital environments.”
Photo: Courtesy NARS
The brand is no stranger to the futuristic, having commissioned a series of NFTs in mid-2021 with Pakistani multi-media artist Sara Shakeel, DJ and Russian music producer Nina Kraviz, and Haitian-American designer Azéde Jean-Pierre. Founder François Nars is also known for his iconic photography, and art books which play with the relation between art and makeup.
Photo: Courtesy NARS
