Marlène is the fictitious name of a real person, a famous French actress. In this creative project, the illustrator and artist Ekaterina Koroleva took up the story of how it all began for Le Manoir skincare and interpreted it in the character of Marlène. The project takes us to the world of film, to a film set in Luxembourg where the first Le Manoir cream was created. The constant application and removal of make-up had irritated the French lead actress’s skin to such a degree that she could not take any more.
As a philosophical abstraction, “make-up” as the modern version of the theatrical mask is also fascinating as a metaphor: It can be interpreted as a symbol for all social masks. Sometimes they are forced on us; sometimes we don them ourselves in order to live up to an ideal. Yet these masks prevent us from being our own individual selves.
At Le Manoir Art, the aim is to inspire. Marlène not only represents the actress on the film set in Luxembourg, but also symbolises our philosophy, in which creativity plays a major role. We want to raise questions so that we can find answers in future projects. Marlène is there to remind us of the importance of lateral thinking and of discovering what we, personally, care about – and therefore what is really important to us. Because that alone is true luxury.
Ekaterina Koroleva also created the beauty illustrations for the care routine on our homepage. What we particularly like are Ekaterina’s focused brushstrokes and the expression in her paintings – it is fascinating to see how much a single line can say and how, through deliberate omission, room for interpretation can be created.
Text: Katharina Arimont
