Beauty Design

Cosmetically-enhanced beauty is something thathas existed for decades. Over the course of thelast century, however, a cosmetics industry hasarisen that is worth millions. Its products claim tooptimize visual appearance, to bestow inner andouter health and to delay aging, under a veneerof medical credibility and reliable results.Cosmetics deals in alleged »deep-acting« substances,which are supposed to detoxify and topurify the body from within. However, the wholearsenal of cosmetic ingredients is founded moreon persuasion than conviction. Cosmetics is alwaysa matter of mimicking an ideal. To this extent,cosmetic discourse deals in what might bedescribed as an iconography of hunger ¿ it requiresand is predicated upon a feeling of lack.At the same time, it promises to remedy thatlack.The referential frame for cosmetics is constitutedby cultural history and iconology, by semioticsand sociology, by psychology and rhetoric.Like fashion, it has called into being a linguisticsystem of considerable depth and complexity;one that draws its subtexts from futurology andhistory, from medicine and alchemy, from nostalgiaand from heritage preservation.Cosmetics are supposed to make one moreattractive and more seductive ¿ to make onepositively irresistible, in fact. Cosmetics hold outthe prospect of sexiness to women and menalike. All that one has to do is to acquire the rightcreams and lotions, the right palette of powdersand rouges, of lipsticks and mascara, and onehas a form of beauty that can be bought!The persuasive power of cosmetics is as dominantas it is irresistible. All of us could resist it ifwe wished to. And yet we don¿t wish to.This book exposes the rhetorical system behindthe promises of cosmetics in terms of thehistories of cultures and of mentalities, analysingthe verbal/visual messages of selected examples.The internationally known architecture and designhistorian Volker Fischer was deputy directorof the Deutsches Architekturmuseum in Frankfurtam Main for over ten years. Since 1995 he hasbuilt up a new design department in the Museumfor Applied Arts in Frankfurt; in addition to hismuseum work he teaches history of architectureand design at the Hochschule für Gestaltung inOffenbach. Volker Fischer is already representedin Edition Axel Menges by books on StefanWewerka, Richard Meier, the Commerzbank inFrankfurt by Norman Foster, Hall 3 of MesseFrankfurt am Main by Nicholas Grimshaw, andthe design activities of Lufthansa.