15 Minutes With Peter Philips

What was it about L.A. that inspired you to create this new line of lipsticks?

One thing I knew for sure was that Jennifer [Lawrence] was going to be the face of this line. We usually do the shoots with Jennifer here, so for me, she is L.A.—she’s Hollywood, she’s a movie star. So even though we never really planned it in the beginning, there were elements of L.A. that kept coming back because of this Jennifer link. That’s why I thought: Why don’t we make L.A. the theme? When I start a collection, I always try to make it easy for women to find their way around it, because when there’s a new lipstick launch, it can be intimidating when you see all these shades. Normally, we divide them into groups, like reds, nudes, peaches. This time, I said, let’s do it differently. I kept going back to the idea of the impressions that I had of L.A., so we came up with keywords.

And this became how you classified the different shades in the collection?

Yes. For example, to me, the “pastels” stand for the vanilla shakes that you get at ’50s-style diners. And then we’ve got the “neons,” which represent movie theatres, because when you walk outside one, you see those neon lights. The “classics” this time around are classic Hollywood: Red carpets, movie stars, that kind of stuff. Finally, the “wild” shades are the dark and wild side of L.A., with more pigmented and daring colours. And each of the shades are also named in a very fun and playful manner.

Are these your impressions of how things are in L.A. or things you’ve personally experienced?

These impressions are all my experiences in L.A. The first time I came to L.A. many years ago, it was for a shoot. On the first day, we were shooting at the Hollywood sign—I remember sitting on the “O”, thinking to myself: “Wow, it’s my first time here,” and I felt like I was part of a movie. That afternoon, we shot at the Hollywood Walk of Fame. All those things you know from movies and postcards, they’re my real and very lasting impressions. In fact, there was a shoot with Kate Moss and one of the shots was in a ’50s-style diner. So for me, I associate L.A. with all these kinds of stuff. It’s a bit of a cliché but they’re very L.A. as well, so why not play with them?

When you came up with this lacquer stick, did you feel there was something missing in the market that you could create to fill the gap?