Have you ever wanted to watch two latex-clad gimps put make-up on a sealed-up Julia Fox? Good news
Julia Fox is hanging in the air, suspended in a vacuum-pack seal in the middle of an echoey concrete warehouse. Two ominous figures clad in latex gimp suits approach her, one carrying a suitcase filled with steel tools and an eyeshadow palette. The figures walk up to Fox, grab her face and start putting make-up on her. The beginning of a fetish film for people with an unusual combined kink for BDSM and beauty products? No, it’s just the latest campaign film for Isamaya Ffrench’s beauty brand Isamaya Beauty.
It’s been a year since Ffrench launched her own eponymous make-up and skincare brand, after years of lending her extraordinary creative talents to brands ranging from Tom Ford to Byredo. Isamaya Beauty debuted with the Industrial collection, a BDSM-inspired line of products that took visual and spiritual cues from the extreme and the hardcore. Since then, she has shown off her eclectic range with a rhinestone cowboy-themed collection and a series of dick lipsticks. But now she has returned to her roots with Industrial 2.0, a reimagined update of the original collection.
“The BDSM subculture I explored for this theme is so rich culturally and aesthetically, I felt it was a missed opportunity to keep Industrial where we left it with the first collection,” Ffrench tells Dazed. “I wanted to find a negative to it, something lighter and a bit more colourful, which is why we veered towards a metallic, transparent world.” For the new collection, the trademark eyeshadow palette from Industrial, moulded into the form of a body, has been given a silver make-over with more playful shades – colourful and shimmery pastels.
Two more shades have also been added to Liplacq, the plumping lip gloss which originally came in a black shade and which Fox is a big fan of, calling it a “game-changer” in her interview with Dazed last year. ‘Rust’ is a rusty orange with gold pigment, while ‘Metal’ is the silver lip gloss you have always dreamed of. “This collection is all about celebrating and finding power in non-conformity. Exploring individuality and owning it,” says Ffrench. “Those values appeal to me as much as the highly aestheticised world the BDSM subculture generated. I started with BDSM but I intend to explore many others too, because they all deserve to be recognised.”
When it came to casting the campaign, it was a no-brainer to approach Fox, who Ffrench says has been a supporter of the brand since the beginning, and Richie Shazam who stars as the other gimp alongside Ffrench and who she calls “a force to be reckoned with”. “Julia represents all the values I wanted to convey with the brand: she’s liberated, funny and very simply she loves experimenting with make-up,” she says.
“I think Julia embodies self-confidence, which is a captivating quality we all aspire to. She has this spirit of not caring about what other people think, which, in our digital age, where everyone is online shaming each other more than ever, has become a statement. It’s what we all want but struggle to do, so we admire people who are capable of that but she also stands up for others and has deep moral values.”