Gucci Westman’s Make-Up Brand Finally Launches In The Middle East
BAZAAR speaks to celebrity make-up artist Gucci Westman about her collection that is all about perfecting your complexion
Beloved by Hollywood A-listers (Cameron Diaz, Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Aniston are all regular clients who rave about her ability to makes anyone “look like Gisele”) Gucci Westman is known for her natural beauty-enhancing, glowy looks for red carpet, film and catwalk.
Following her role as global artistic director for Lancôme, Gucci launched her own brand in 2018, but with the release of Westman Atelier limited to the US market. But thanks to Net-a-Porter, the “conscious luxury”, collection is now available in the Middle East and Europe, exclusively via Net-a-Porter, including three Japanese, hand-crafted brushes, and six face and complexion products.
During an intimate afternoon tea with key beauty editors in London’s swish Chelsea postcode, Gucci explains to Harper’s BAZAAR Arabia that her goal for Westman Atelier is to offer a thoughtful range of colour cosmetics, with a strong skincare energy. While she plays down her reputation for delivering natural skin-focused looks – “I can do other looks too, I can do a darn good bold eye!” – the truth is that Westman Atelier does excel in creating beautifully flawless complexions that still appear fresh and natural, with formulas that seem closer to skincare than make-up.
Lit Up Highlight Stick- Lit, Dhs180.15 at Net-a-Porter
Her Vital Skin Stick Foundation is loaded with hydrating ingredients including coconut oil, and two kinds of camellia oils, and feature buildable pigments without the heaviness, eschewing the usual stick foundation stereotype. The Baby Cheeks Blush Sticks include jojoba oil and antioxidants-rich raspberry stem cells, to help add an enriched glow to skin. The Lit Up Highlight Stick gives a radiance that’s both natural and striking, containing vitis vita grape extract to promote the production of the skin’s own collagen, and hyaluronic acid, for plumped up skin.
Baby Cheeks Blush Stick- Petal, (dhs188.34), courtesy of (no name for credits yet)
A soon-to-launch mascara will join her collection, a product that Gucci muses taught her an incredible amount about how ‘natural’ beauty isn’t often the best formula, ingredient or molecule for the job. “I have changed my mindset, to where I now prefer ‘clean’ to describe my products,” she tells BAZAAR. “Natural is something I like to live by, but sometimes a lab-created ingredient is actually purer and far better for the environment. It’s now all about finding that balance and doing no harm.”
In development, Gucci also found new challenges when it came to perfecting each product. “I’m such a stubborn person and became so involved in this process, down to needing to know every little detail and what percentage of what ingredient would produce the exact results I needed,” she says.
“I would send so many versions of the mascara back in particular – the ingredients list may be as natural as possible, but then the performance wasn’t up to my standards, and so we would start again.” Being so hands-on with each new formula meant that Gucci has developed a healthy respect for the science behind cosmetics chemistry, as her team were able to fine-tune and test out new techniques to bring her dream product to life. “It takes a lot of time, trial and error, but then we have something that we can say is honestly the best possible formula, and that I’m very proud of.”
Westman Atelier is now available at Net-a-Porter.com.