Maybelline NY x KR Launch Review

Posted on April 27, 2012 by Bambi

Maybe it’s Maybelline, or maybe not.

Yesterday marked the official launch of the 2012 Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Australia x Maybelline NY x KR partnership.

Held in Angel Place, a gorgeous little hide-away in the middle of Sydney’s CBD, the launch promised to inject the city with a shock of technicolour inspiration, delivered to us via the uniquely drippy signature style of celebrated New York street artist, KR.

As 10P, Rex and I trundled off George St and into Angel Place, we entertained our hypotheses that KR would transform the enormous white blocks in the centre of the alley into vivid prisms that would tell of Maybelline’s newest colour palette and set Sydney’s media into an inspired frenzy in the preamble to Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Australia.

Maybelline posters have cropped up across the city over the last week, and the women in the campaign are Birds of Paradise, their faces smudged with vibrant colour combinations of oranges and purples, reds and yellows, all accented with fierce metallics. We couldn’t wait to see how KR, armed with KRINK paint canisters reminiscent of fire extinguishers, would interpret this season’s colour direction.

Live art has gone fairly swiftly from taboo, to trendy, to tired, and the work resulting from yesterday’s launch was the metaphorical tombstone signalling that the short-lived epidemic has probably reached its expiration. The event began and ended without a moment’s ceremony and without a single reference to MBFWA or Maybelline (aside from the brief and ungainly appearance of DJ and face of the brand, Ruby Rose, who slouched around in the background for a while before charmingly taking the KRINK canister from KR and spraying her initials onto the white backdrop, for reasons upon which I am still not clear). KR’s live art session lasted around ten minutes, during which time he sprayed blue paint across the big white blocks, and a little bit accidentally on the wall.

And that’s it.

We left with no more insight than that with which we arrived, and probably a little less inspiration. It is unfortunate because the partnership makes perfect sense and the concept was brimming with potential. Nevertheless, we are still awaiting Fashion Week with bated breath, and look forward to delivering you more coverage in the weeks to come.

In the meantime, check out our interview with KR, who, despite the relatively underwhelming events of yesterday, is actually a pretty cool guy…