The Artist Collection by Marlene Lufen

I always prefer a brush, never a sponge.

My make-up bag must-have is blush, or actually Lip Liner too.

The first thing I reach for is coffee. Or did you mean the first Make-up product? When I put on Make-up, I always start with foundation, and if I don't wear foundation during the day, I use a little concealer instead.

For me, this may be the most beautiful project I have ever done as a collaboration.

That’s why it was so important to me that we create a collection in brown. At first, you actually wanted to include another color as well. But I practically begged you to let me work with brown. I love this color in all its cool shades at the moment. It was incredibly wonderful to play with the color brown like that.

My motto is: just do it, it might turn out well. I don't overthink it; I trust myself and go for it.

I love it when the things I work with are beautiful and high quality. That’s how I feel about everything.

When I cook, I love my ingredients, my knife, and my wooden spoon. I don’t have hundreds of thousands of things, but I do have a good frying pan and a beautiful pot, and I love them. It’s the same with my Make-up. I discovered your Brushes many years ago. I love them and have my favorites. So, honestly, it was wonderful when you asked me if I wanted to collaborate. It’s a little dream come true for me to be able to design beautiful Brushes myself, with this fantastic quality, as my own brush collection. That’s truly something very special to me.

There are so many different philosophies about how to apply Make-up. By the way, I always do my own Make-up, which many people don’t realize. I do my own Make-up on breakfast television and even on Promi Big Brother; afterward, at most, a few small false eyelashes are added. Basically, I use my Make-up, my hands, and my Brushes.

The quality of Brushes makes a huge difference. If you apply eyeshadow and pick up the wrong Brush - one that is bristly or doesn’t pick up the eyeshadow well - your Make-up simply won’t look as beautiful. That’s why I love having good tools to work with, because then applying Make-up is fun too. If we’re honest: when we women apply Make-up, it’s something beautiful. It makes us feel good, and that’s exactly why I love my brush collection.

The camera doesn’t make me nervous anymore, which is one thing. The other is that over time, you become more relaxed about your own face. I used to worry sometimes when I felt that my hair wasn’t sitting right, that I hadn’t done my makeup well enough, or that I was too tired and didn’t feel pretty. Today I tend to think: Well, she’s just not having such a great day. But it doesn’t upset me anymore. I’ve grown used to my face and made friends with it. I’m fine with it without makeup, too. Still, I naturally enjoy wearing makeup.

At some point, most people notice something about their face that they don’t like. That was already the case for me when I was young. I realized that I actually have a large nose, and it isn’t the most beautiful one either. Later, I also noticed that one eye looks a little smaller when I laugh or when I’m tired, and you can really get caught up in things like that. I remember a time when I was constantly making little adjustments to my face. I thought, if I pull this up here, the eye looks better. Then my makeup artist said to me: Just never do that again - don’t look at yourself in the mirror and pull this up here. I really took that to heart. And I think that’s the trick: not looking in the mirror and only seeing what isn’t perfect, but simply thinking, this is okay. On a day when you don’t feel as pretty, just don’t look in the mirror as often - that’s what I do. And I have one more appeal: Don’t start having things done too early. Because at some point, it becomes too much, and then it’s very difficult to look the way you would naturally look again. It’s better to make peace with what you have.

I enjoy doing my make-up; I simply like it. For me, it’s also a creative process. When I have something new, I look forward to trying it out. To me, doing make-up is essentially painting, a way of expressing yourself artistically. And I have to admit, I prefer doing my make-up in private, because for television, of course, I have to do a little more. At the end of the program, I always feel like, now all that powder needs to come off again. Even so, I’ve noticed that I wear less and less make-up as the years go by. I used to do a thick eyeliner, always Black above the lash line. I hardly ever do that anymore. These days, I wear make-up more subtly, and I think that’s a good thing as you get older.

I'm glad you asked. Sometimes it takes a bit of courage to say things as you truly feel them, because there is an enormous amount of social pressure. There is always that one opinion you think will avoid ruffling any feathers if you express it. Over the course of my life and career, I've sometimes thought, this is how I experience reality and the lives of the people around me - but that isn't the case at all. It feels neither authentic nor fair. And at some point, I realized that the skepticism I sometimes felt had been justified in hindsight. I could simply have said that I didn't think something was good. Then there was a major moment when I spoke out, and that was definitely a good thing. Basically, I have to give my two cents on everything. But every now and then, I think it's important, whether in public, within the family, or among friends, to calmly say how you see things yourself. Even if someone might think they've figured you out and put you in a box. But no one who authentically says what they perceive with an open heart belongs in one. I'm not afraid of the response either, and that's a good thing.

There’s something incredibly beautiful about creating something lasting, being creative, and bringing something into existence that remains and that other people can look at. As an artist who paints pictures, you naturally always have that. I don’t always have that myself, but I really love doing it. The whole design process, from the first thought to the finished Brush, as we have it now, was incredibly enjoyable for me. It’s one of the most beautiful projects I’ve ever had the opportunity to work on, simply because I was able to be so creative. You also gave me a free hand. I brought my daughter along, who is also very creative and artistically inclined, just like my mother and probably my great-grandfather, whom we never knew. That’s a great mystery in my family. In any case, we’re all very creative and enjoy designing. It was an incredibly beautiful process. We sat down with your creatives and artists. I learned a lot, but I also had plenty of opportunities to experiment. I really think the result is very, very beautiful.

I had several thoughts. For one thing, I’ve known your designs and products for so many years. I bought my first Brush at least twelve years ago, and I love the way they’re designed. When you asked me to create my own collection, I thought it needed to have a little of my touch. It needed to look a little different from the beautiful Brushes you usually make. My favorite color is brown, and I definitely wanted to do something with it. At the same time, I love it when everything in my makeup bag looks beautiful, like little works of art or treasures: my concealer, my lipstick, my Brushes, all those things. I also sometimes bring home a beautiful product from vacation; my makeup bag simply has to look great. So I thought about what a Brush would need to look like to fit in there. It wasn’t overloaded with creativity and ideas, but simply understated. It should look cool, brown, and casual.

That was an incredible realization for me too. I prepared myself and first went to an art supply store because I thought, before having this design day, you should try things out a little. I bought some great pens and a pad, experimented a bit, combined colors, and it brought me so much joy. I really thought then that I should do this much more often - simply pick up a pad and some pens and paint something. Wonderful. Then we started our design day together, and I learned so much. There are techniques for designing a round brush. First, you have to know which color you’re starting with, then you roll the brush and give it a base color; we tried this base coat in different colors. We worked with different techniques: wiping, rolling, splattering. We had old toothbrushes that we used for splattering, and it was all so much fun. For me, the art was also about consciously leaving a few things out so that it wasn’t simply covered with everything that could possibly be added. I really loved working with the artists and, in the end, being able to decide for myself which product would be the final result.