L’OREAL AT THE LOUVRE: A NEW JOURNEY TO ENGAGE DIVERSE AUDIENCES
PARIS – L’Oréal Groupe and Louvre Museum have recently joined forces to forge a three-year cultural mediation partnership that seamlessly merges art and beauty, but also their respective audiences. Under the partnership, they have created a new exhibition route through the Louvre museum which opened mid-November 2024, entitled ‘De toutes beautés!’ Rituals, objects, and representations of beauty: A journey of discovery in the galleries of the Louvre Museum - accompanied by a web app of that same name. The exhibition features a signposted collection of 108 selected works of art, via three core themes, spanning 10,000 years of history and various cultures from Greece to Iraq and Italy. Enter, a brand survival guide (L’Oréal) and a brand revival guide (Louvre).
Narrating 10,000 Years Of Beauty Ideals Via Art
At the heart of this partnership lies diversity, a core component of beauty, stemming from its innate “plurality” across time. “At the heart of our mission, in the idea of creating beauty that drives the world forward, lies the desire to democratize and tell the story of beauty, its plurality, and its role since the dawn of humanity. This is the compass that guides our patronage and leads us to seek new paths and new perspectives,” said L’Oréal Groupe CEO Nicolas Hieronimus. “In this regard, the Louvre was the obvious choice for this partnership, given the richness and diversity of its collections and its ability to shed light on even the most contemporary of questions,” he added.
The route involves a bespoke tour of the museum tracing the evolution of beauty - beauty has been vital to humanity for time eternal - through the artworks and what they reveal about societies and transformations. Which speaks to a shared common value between L’Oréal and the Louvre addressed through this initiative - that of diversity. As L’Oréal Groupe Director of Art, Culture and Heritage, Delphine Urbach explains, “The aim of this tour is to talk about diversity and plurality. We’re trying to say it in the title, “De toutes beautés” (Of all beauties), in the plural. It’s to say that beauty is always a question of the other’s gaze, so it’s necessarily subjective, plural and diverse.” A plurality also contested by Hieronimus: “The whole idea behind this partnership was a shared passion for what is beautiful, and a shared desire to tell the story of beauty, which has [existed] since humankind exists”. Because, “beauty is never anything static or immutable, and continues reinventing itself over time,” as President and Director of the Louvre Museum, Laurence des Cars, explained. And it is precisely this keyword-sentiment of beauty’s natural ability to “reinvent” itself that appealed to the brands in the first place, who in turn, adopted it via this strategic partnership.
A Win–Win Situation, Under A New, “Younger” Light
Diversity aside, in en ever-evolving consumer-driven ecosystem, this exclusive collaboration is not just an extraordinary journey exploring beauty’s timeless impact and its enduring legacy in both art and society showcasing its powerful role in shaping art and culture across time. Both the world’s biggest beauty company and largest museum are seeking to benefit from this tie-in.
“The idea of this unique journey is that it invites visitors to experience the Louvre's collections in a new light,” says Louvre’s Laurence des Cars. By bringing art and beauty in such an unexpected and unpredictable way and in such a truly unique setting two of France’s preeminent institutions are seeking to exploit their cultural capital whilst at the same time tap into new audiences. In fact, as the press release reads, the precise aim of this unprecedented mediation program across Louvre Museum’s galleries, is to share the story of beauty throughout history, with the widest possible audience. And most potentially, the wildest possible younger audience as the new program has been specifically designed to reach a new and a younger generation. “It happens that beauty, its practices, gestures, and canons, is the number one topic of conversation on social media today. It’s a very popular subject, and through it, we reach an audience that doesn’t naturally turn to the museum, a younger audience,” said Gautier Verbeke, Director of Mediation and Audience Development at the Louvre Museum.
To that end, it has made things particularly playful, youthful and exciting. The program offers an in-museum experience via an app where visitors can scan QR codes for 44 of the artworks to receive an “audio tale”. In addition, it offers a six-episode web series co-produced by the Louvre and L’Oréal, scheduled to broadcast beginning of 2025, and will allow people to discover some of the most iconic works from this curated collection through the eyes of a group of young visitors. “This theme, very open, very universal, yet very close, almost familiar in the minds of visitors, allows us to offer a new approach and, therefore, a unique experience for visitors: it will be the first time the Louvre offers a tour through a web app that covers the entire museum, and especially with [very accessible] audio content narrated in the first person,” explained Verbeke. “With this program, we are experimenting with a very fresh, direct tone, and one that is embraced as such,” he added.
Staying Relevant
To sum up, the union between two of the most renowned French patrimony establishments - the 1793-born Louvre, which is the biggest museum in the world, and the 115 year-old L’Oréal, the number-one beauty company in the world, is also a way to stay relevant to the young global audience - diversity’s most prominent advocate. And it successfully does this by shining new perspectives at a time when beauty goes beyond cosmetics - into diversity, inclusivity and longevity. Values, greatly important to young consumers across the globe - L’Oréal boasts a portfolio of 37 international brands and a global presence which spans across an ever-wider variety of populations worldwide.
At the same time, they both benefit from exposure and visibility facilitated by this fascinating partnership which attracts different generations and different audiences. Beauty giant L’Oréal (it notably generated €32.4 billion in the first nine months of 2024) harnesses Parisian cultural icon’s prestige and the exposure to its 30,000 daily visitors. In turn, it provides the museum with an attractive remuneration package - it revives its spirit in order to encourage the Paris public to revisit the museum a little more systematically via offering something new and something rejuvenating to experience. Via unveiling, an unprecedented beauty-meets-art experience.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
NICOLE ZENIOU
Nicole Zeniou is a Contributing Fashion Features Editor at Bungalow 28, joining in 2024. Previously the Fashion Features Editor at Madame Figaro Cyprus, she has contributed to titles like Marie Claire Greece, Cosmopolitan Cyprus, and The Cyprus Weekly. Founder of the online interview magazine The Éditor, Nicole is passionate about blending creative disciplines and supporting international talent. She has interviewed leading fashion figures such as LaQuan Smith, David Koma, Casey Cadwallader, Lorenzo Serafini, and Mary Katrantzou.
Bungalow 28 partners with art galleries and cultural institutions to enhance their marketing strategies – from technical implementation to creative conception.