With 72,735 m² of rooms and galleries, the world’s largest museum (by size) has until now been known for developing its merchandising with the support of partners in fashion and accessories, as well as tableware. Since 2019, it has also had to rely on the redoubled support of perfume and cosmetics brands. The L’Oréal group and Parfums de Marly are among the latest brands to take advantage of the Louvre’s cultural aura, with product launches in limited editions and beyond.
For a year now, L’ Oréal, the world’s leading beauty company, has been using an image familiar to archaeology enthusiasts and museum visitors to illustrate and glamorize its quarterly results: the Victory of Samothrace.
But rather than present the ancient sculpture – almost as famous in the Louvre as the Mona Lisa – capping the top of the Dalu staircase from a purely museum angle, L’Oréal prefers to opt for a pop treatment with actress Zendaya. Her arms and black dress are superimposed on the winged work of art and the missing arms and head. The actress, who first came to public attention in Denis Villeneuve’s film adaptation of Dune and can be seen in majesty in the shot, is not yet starring in the film Challengers.
While L’Oréal has opted for a pop turn by launching its very first collaboration with the Musée du Louvrewith Lancôme in 2023, the 230-year-old cultural institution, now world-famous, saw its image modernized overnight by Beyoncé one day in June 2018.
Since then, the Musée du Louvre, which recently raised its admission ticket to 22 euros, has been increasingly courted by brands, particularly those from the luxury and beauty worlds. For brands, it’s a question of targeting a new clientele and benefiting, like cultural influencers, from a reinforced extra-commercial cultural endorsement.
A cultural institution turned cool
It took a long time for the Musée du Louvre to become France’s most visited museum, with 8.9 million visitors in 2023, close to its pre-pandemic attendance levels.
The former royal fortress of Philippe Auguste , which became a royal residence from Charles V to Louis XIV, became a museum following the French Revolution. Although the idea of a museum was put forward by the Sun King, who was more attracted by Versailles, it was Napoleon Bonaparte, more at ease in the Tuileries, who turned it into a great museum dedicated to the arts, with the help of its first director, Dominique Vivant Denon, who gave his name to a wing of the establishment, which today houses the Mona Lisa.
Napoleon III gave the Louvre its current form by building two main buildings surrounding the Cour Napoléon, where the Pyramid now stands. The Pyramid, built in 1985 by Chinese-American architect Leoh Ming Pei as part of the Grand Louvre redevelopment project and inaugurated in March 1989, brought the museum up to date. The aim of French President François Mitterrand and his Minister of Culture Jack Lang was to transform the Musée du Louvre into the largest museum in the world. The Grand Louvre plan consisted in improving visitor flow and the quality of reception by reclaiming the Richelieu wing, which at the time had been given over to the Ministry of Finance and the Economy.
However, in the 230 years of its existence, the Palais’ real revolution comes from a 6-minute music video for The Carters, the name of the duo formed by singer Beyoncé and her husband Jay Z. Released in June 2018, the “APESHIT ”clip from the album Everything Is Love shows the museum’s collections like never before to the younger generation. The two artists stroll through the museum’s works at night, from the Victory of Samothrace to the portrait of a black woman by Marie-Guillemine Benoist, via the Virgin with the Green Cushion by Andrea di Bartolo dit Solario. Culminating today at 283 million views (compared to 80 million at the time of its release), the music video has contributed to a 27% increase in museum attendance compared to 2017, accumulating 10.3 million visitors. This creative UFO has made the Louvre “a cool brand ”, in the words of mediator Pierre Hadrien Poulouin. A work between classicism and modernity, where historical paintings and sculptures coexist with hip-hop codes and the demands of African-American rights. The museum has made no mistake, and has even developed a tour around the seventeen works featured in the duo’s video, entitled “In the Footsteps of Beyoncé and Jay Z”.
An almost branded tour that seems to have inspired the L’Oréal group.
At the service of all beauties
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Read also > L’Oréal posts outstanding results for the first half of 2024
Photo à la Une : Unsplash
