‘Conformity isn’t the goal’: Byredo’s Lucia Pica on rejecting beauty ideals

Not everyone tells their story with words. For Lucia Pica, her language of expression is colour. “They talk to me, they speak to me in that emotional sense,” she says. “I use colour to tell the story and express the emotions within a moment.” In 2023, for her debut collection as creative image and make-up partner at Byredo, Pica presented a love letter to the complexities of the colour red with shades mimicking the elation and heartbreak of falling in love. It’s no surprise, then, that careful consideration was put into choosing the colour palette for her latest launch, the Lip Care collection. 

A new category for the brand, the refillable lip balms come in four tinted sheer shades and one transparent, and are full of hydrating and nourishing ingredients. Following Pica’s ethos of make-up as a sensorial ritual, the balms are housed in Byredo’s signature sculptural gold and silver casing and have been scented by Master Perfumer Jérôme Epinette, who created a blend of red fruits, powdery florals and the comforting warmth of vanilla cream. The result is that the mundane, everyday gesture of keeping your lips hydrated is transformed into a moment of pleasure. 

“We started thinking about the addictive and sensorial experience. Texture was a key focus because it has to do the job not only of enhancing beauty, but also giving comfort and nourishment,” says Pica, who is a self-proclaimed “lipstick girl”. When it came to the shades, she established a core range of colours that will suit your needs, from red and a subtle nude, to a pink that reacts to the lips’ natural pH balance, creating a unique, personalised shade. “With these five colours, there’s the interesting element of the changing of the natural colour, there’s the transparency, and then we cover the three sophisticated families of colours,” she explains.

As has always been her philosophy, Pica wanted to create products that allow people to find joy and comfort in beauty, to express themselves. To her, it’s the imperfections and eccentricities that create the most captivating faces. “Concentrate on finding those products that are a bit more playful and they can excite you, rather than dictate or play on your insecurities,” is her advice. We caught up with Pica to find out more about the collection, playing around with colour and rejecting the homogenous.

Can you tell me about the new collection of balms?

Lucia Pica: I spent a lot of time working on this texture. I find that lip balms, in general, sit on top of the skin. This texture penetrates and works on the hydration and nourishing of the lips without having that feeling of dryness after a lot of application. These balms stimulate that comfort and addiction in applying it, not because your lips are dry, but because the texture is so smooth and buttery and it’s really comfortable. 

What I wanted to do with this was combine that lip care feeling with the sophistication of a lipstick. Lipsticks, to me, have a sophistication and the power in their colour. And so the amount of pigment that is in them is enough to be like a very transparent sheer satin lipstick, especially if you build it up. But it also doesn’t feel like you’re committing to a real lipstick, you can reapply it without a mirror or on top of something else.

One of the five shades is a pH reactive colour which feels very nostalgic.

Lucia Pica: Yeah, because it’s all that we could put on [laughs]. You know what I used to do? I used to bite my lips, to make them redder. I wasn’t allowed to wear lipstick. I just remembered this moment, I was about 10 and I was biting my lips and looking at myself in a mirror with this colour. This reminds me of that, you know, youthful and fresh, like bitten lips. The colour will depend on the person, so it’s all about you and the mood that you’re in – your personality will come through. It’s nice to talk about an individuality in colour. 

Colour is such a passion of yours and such a key element in the work that you do. When you only have five shades, what’s the process of choosing the colours?

Lucia Pica: I know! So I definitely need to cover the red world. I always need to cover that browny warm 90s world. That covers a lot of skin tones, it looks good on many people. Then there’s the subtle beige, with a little bit of warmth through it so it’s not too concealing. Then it was thinking about something really natural and authentic, so the transparent one. And I like pink, but I don't like pink that is too gimmicky. So for me to have that, I would want to have the transparency and the stimulation of the natural colour, less 80s frosty pink.

We’ve talked before about how you wanted to create a bridge between make-up and perfume, and these lip balms have a scent to them...

Lucia Pica: Well, when I talked about creating a bridge between make-up and perfume, I was talking about the idea and the emotions and the stories behind the perfumes that had built the brand. I have always talked about colours and emotions, and how colours have their own personalities, and I felt like he [Ben Gorham] had done that with the ingredients of the perfumes in order to create a story around what we feel. 

So when I was thinking about the scent for the lip balms, it had to be a lot about the comfort, so the vanilla brings that comfort, you could almost eat it. And then the freshness and the sophistication come from the fruits that are in the scent and the rose petals. 

Last time that we spoke, you said something that I really loved. ‘Beauty is made of perfection and imperfections, living together beautifully.’ That is such a beautiful philosophy.

Lucia Pica: You look at a face, the face doesn’t need to be symmetrical in order to be beautiful. There are beautiful, symmetrical faces, of course, but how many people have you seen who are very attractive and very beautiful, but there is no perfection necessarily. Their nose is not the idea of perfection, but it’s perfect for that face, there’s a balance there. I don’t want to think that there is one idea of beauty that serves everybody. I have a birthmark and I think that contributes to who I am. There’s beauty in that, and there’s beauty because of that as well. I don’t like – what is the word that I’m looking for? One type of beauty?

Homogeneous?

Lucia Pica: Yeah, you know, just having to conform to this one idea, I feel like is just wrong. I don’t remember saying that, but it is a concept that I live by.

What would you say to people who are struggling to accept the imperfection side of beauty?

Lucia Pica: I think that to accept yourself, you really have to understand that conformity isn’t the goal. You need to understand what you’re about, which is obviously a bigger job that is internal and external. Make-up can give you the possibility of expressing yourself or enhancing yourself. There is a lightness that comes with using make-up that really supports your well-being.

So it’s about finding out what your idea of looking good is. I think the problem comes in when you’re forced to take someone else’s idea of what looks better.

Lucia Pica: Yeah, dictating ways of being beautiful has gone a little bit too far for my liking. I’m always promoting self-expression, I’m always promoting individualism. Of course, I like a certain perfection in the finish of the skin. But I also like transparency in a product that allows your natural skin to come through, and not a caked, covered face. It’s nice when you use make-up in a way that becomes part of you and is something that you use and it doesn’t use you. It’s really about how you use this medium of expression. I think sometimes you have to switch the perception in your head, and then you can really enjoy something. I have friends who feel like make-up is a chore. It never feels like that to me. I see it as something fun, this magic moment in the morning.