Life Is a Stage: Make Up For Ever

What is unmistakable here is that Life Is a Stage: Make Up For Ever is as much about the photographic images as it is about the brand. The visuals by Ellen von Unwerth are pretty amazing in ways that one would never imagine given the topic of the book. Be that as it may, Dany Sanz pays tribute to the brand she founded, to her career and to her colleagues with a love letter of a book that will offer the reader an astonishing body of work. If a picture is worth one thousand words then here you have approximately 170,000 words that speak to the brand Make Up Forever in the loudest possible voice.

Sanz has provided an extremely novel way to address the how and why she founded her brand which to some readers will be unknown and to the savvy will be about a mega brand owned by LVMH with over 3000 points of sale. In other words this is no cottage industry fly by the seat of your pants cosmetics brand, this is big business.

If the reader deprives his or herself of reading the rather abbreviated text, they will lose the DNA and modus operandi of the brand and just assume that Make Up for Ever is a brand strictly used and devoted to makeup professionals whether in fashion, theater, or photography. Sanz’s unique presentation is pretty much a scenario scripted by her not only in text form but in sketch form as well, which is shown in a separate soft bound volume. The magic of course comes to an almost startling crescendo when it all comes to life and is translated via the Make Up For Ever team, Sanz herself and Ellen von Unwerth.

Consider this a great coffee table book, but in reality it is a book that should be read to fully understand what message is being is relayed with these images. By the way, the sketch book is all in French so you will need a working knowledge of the language.