Art meets advertising with Lux co-creations

World-renowned Spanish illustrator, painter and engraver Gabriel Moreno recently collaborated with Unilever and JWT Singapore to create a unique mixed media painting using Lux Magical Spell body wash, for a campaign for the brand’s Fine Fragrance Elixir line.

Drops of the fragrant purple and red coloured Fine Fragrance body washes were used by Moreno to create a large scale art work in his trademark, intricate style, which has won him a place among the world’s leading illustrators. Moreno, who earned a degree in Fine Arts from the University of Sevilla in 1998, has worked with top-tier publications, including Rolling Stone, Time Out London and the Los Angeles Times, which also featured his illustration of Los Angeles Philharmonic conductor Gustavo Dudamel on its August, 2009 cover of L.A. Times Magazine.

Moreno says his latest work was inspired by the complex fragrance of Magical Spell. “I wanted to express the feeling of a bewitching, exotic, mysterious beauty in this work,” he says. “Scent brings on powerful emotions, and I wanted to capture that.”

The finished 1.2 by 2 meter piece, which was created live at an event in Singapore to launch Lux’s new body wash line, is both fragrant and visually stunning. It is an evocative expression of how a little Lux can evoke emotions and conjure up incredible worlds.

Lux, which launched the world’s first mass market beauty soap in 1925, pioneered celebrity endorsements:it’s been associated with over 400 of the world’s most glamorous celebrities from Brigitte Bardot and Marilyn Monroe to Aishwarya Rai. Lux is now taking that relationship to a new level, and working with a series of talented stars and artists to co-create art that evokes the emotions inspired by the scent of Lux’s Fine Fragrance body wash line.  

In June, Lux also launched a new global TVC featuring Twilight star Mia Maestro, who not only stars in the ethereal advertisement for Magical Spell, but composed and sang the title song as well. This talented Argentinian singer-songwriter has performed in off-Broadway musicals as well as a blockbuster list of TV and film productions, including Twilight, Frida, Motorcycle Diaries and Alias.

“Scent is a powerful, emotive form of communication – and so is art. These two talented artists do an incredible job of using one to evoke the other,” says Guan Tay Hin, JWT’s Global Executive Creative Director for Lux.  “It not just about endorsing a brand. By creating art that reflects how Magical Spell inspires them, artists like Mia and Gabriel bring the core proposition of Lux to life in an extremely moving way.”