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If you’re here, you’ve likely been consuming a litany of content all throughout your life about how French women are better than you. As have I, as a decades accumulation of Topshop Breton tees can attest. French women, you’ll have learned, don’t blowdry their hair, they refuse anything that might be considered faff (read: no large handbags but also yes to basket bags because Jane Birkin), they don’t buy into trends, they don’t get facelifts (according to one book title by a French woman), and they definitely don’t contour. It’s an unattainable stick you’ve been beating yourself with for years, that you are one crisp, classic white shirt and baguette away from effortless Gallic glamour.
French-born, New York-based make-up artist and influencer Violette, with her excellent Bardot bangs, has been something of an arbiter of French girl glamour for a long time. She has a 300,000 strong Instagram following, over 24 million views on her YouTube channel and been a beauty advisor for everyone from Dior and Estée Lauder to Sephora. Alongside this, for the last three years, she’s been working on her debut beauty brand, all with one goal in mind; making the unobtainable French aesthetic accessible to anyone who thinks the signature effortless French beauty isn’t designed for them.
Just launched, Violette_FR is an 11-piece collection with skincare, make-up, haircare and perfume. “Violette_FR was developed to remind you that you were born perfect. It was made for all of you who wrote to me on social media saying you identified with a different aesthetic— one that was both totally natural and deeply creative,” says a statement for Violette on her website. “For the people who were more interested in celebrating individuality and differences rather than fixating on trends.”
“All my years as a make-up artist allowed me to play with the best products in the world. But I still felt that something was missing: Products that are safe, effective, efficient, luxurious and accessible. These were the elements that I focused on for this brand. Violette_FR was created to encourage you to have fun with make-up, laugh at yourself, seduce yourself, and most importantly, believe with all of your heart in your own je ne sais quoi.”
The products are all new and innovative or perfected classics. The first drop from the brand includes a roll-on oil perfume, glittering and matte liquid eyeshadows, a rose petal inspired red lipstick, a highlighter, a dry shampoo brush and Boum-Boum Milk, an easy, multi-tasking serum, toner and moisturiser all-in-one, in a spray. Right now, the collection is for sale exclusively from Violettefr.com to the US, France, Canada and the UK, and will also be available from French pharmacies in Paris, but more retail partnerships are in the works, so fingers crossed.
Check out the full collection below.
Photography by Violette_FR.