Luxury cosmetics in a tetra-pack
Moving boxes, cans, milk jugs, medication bottles – more and more, designers are putting their scents and cosmetics into ordinary packaging. A review.
DiePresse.com, 27.09.2007 (ThePress.com, 9/27/2007)
(…) Visions of the tetra-pak were floating in designer Thekla Heineke’s head as she developed the packaging for a hair coloring product by Shiseido. The new feature of “Tasting Tone” is its quick and uncomplicated use, and this is precisely what Heineke wanted to highlight. “The familiar shape of a tetra-pak represents the simple, daily use of a product”, says the designer, along the lines of: open, use, and toss. She explains that the strategy to use cheap, or at least ordinary, packaging for luxury cosmetics represents a quest for understatement. Thekla Heineke designs for the Berlin-based agency, kakoii, which is also responsible for the design of the cosmetics line “FSP” by Shiseido. FSP’s foil closures, which do not instill a sense of exclusivity and seem familiar since we are used to seeing them on medications, also play on the aesthetics of the ordinary. Heineke describes the attraction of products designed in this manner as: “It is not high-end, but insiders know nonetheless that it is expensive.”