Introducing the MECCA x NGV Holiday Collaboration Artist for 2024: Natalya Hughes
“To decorate is to adorn, to embellish and to embolden. We use it to show reverence, to show our love, to draw attention to things or to distinguish one thing from all the others.”
Natalya Hughes
MECCA’s holiday campaign packaging has become as iconic as the limited-edition gift releases adorning their shelves, many of which are trickling into store now and instantly covetable. Each year, the beauty powerhouse - along with the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) - chooses an artist of significance to collaborate with, who will create the artwork that adorns the iconic boxes and bags destined to be placed under Christmas trees across Australia and Aotearoa. This year, they’ve chosen a talented woman from Queensland for the honour: Brisbane-based multidisciplinary artist Natalya Hughes.
Natalya’s luminously embellished artwork will be featured on 30 different variations of MECCA’s limited edition gift boxes, bags, tissue paper and gift cards, as well as their signature line collections, with packaging designs for no less than 32 Mecca Cosmetica and MECCA MAX products. Natalya’s globally recognised patterns will also be featured on over 100 Mecca store windows in Australia and Aotearoa, and in stores across various digital touch points, for millions to share in a world of glimmering beauty.
As an artist, mother and educator, Queensland-based Natalya is passionate about sharing her love of art with future creatives. In a celebration of decoration, she embraces ornamental traditions while exploring beauty and femininity, and her richly embellished work invites viewers to enter a world of joy, colour and adornment.
For this body of work, Hughes looks to Russian born, French artist and designer, Erté (Romaine de Tirtoff, 1892 – 1990) whose work is emblematic of the Art Deco style, for a celebration of girlhood and femininity and a playful reimagining of his work. Hughes was inspired by Erté’s illustrations in Lytton Strachey’s Ermyntrude and Esmeralda (written in 1913 and published in 1969), a book gifted to her as a child. The story follows two teenage girls, the titular Ermyntrude and Esmeralda, who have pledged to find out all they can about love and sex.
Re-imagining these scenes, Hughes is drawn to the way in which Erté uses dress and couture to extend and abstract the female figure. Hughes’s paintings depict the dresses full of frills, pleats and bows, operating as stand in portraits of Ermyntrude and Esmeralda to free them from recognisable bodies. It’s simply breath taking, and unlike any MECCA art collaboration that has gone before.
MECCA is dedicated to supporting women in the arts, and this is the ninth year they have partnered with NGV to drive their social change movement: M-POWER. I always look forward to seeing who the brand will create with next, and with Hughes it’s a match made in magical beauty heaven.
Natalya’s luminously embellished artwork will be featured on 30 different variations of MECCA’s limited edition gift boxes, bags, tissue paper and gift cards, as well as their signature line collections, with packaging designs for no less than 32 Mecca Cosmetica and MECCA MAX products. Natalya’s globally recognised patterns will also be featured on over 100 Mecca store windows in Australia and Aotearoa, and in stores across various digital touch points, for millions to share in a world of glimmering beauty.
As an artist, mother and educator, Queensland-based Natalya is passionate about sharing her love of art with future creatives. In a celebration of decoration, she embraces ornamental traditions while exploring beauty and femininity, and her richly embellished work invites viewers to enter a world of joy, colour and adornment.
For this body of work, Hughes looks to Russian born, French artist and designer, Erté (Romaine de Tirtoff, 1892 – 1990) whose work is emblematic of the Art Deco style, for a celebration of girlhood and femininity and a playful reimagining of his work. Hughes was inspired by Erté’s illustrations in Lytton Strachey’s Ermyntrude and Esmeralda (written in 1913 and published in 1969), a book gifted to her as a child. The story follows two teenage girls, the titular Ermyntrude and Esmeralda, who have pledged to find out all they can about love and sex.
Re-imagining these scenes, Hughes is drawn to the way in which Erté uses dress and couture to extend and abstract the female figure. Hughes’s paintings depict the dresses full of frills, pleats and bows, operating as stand in portraits of Ermyntrude and Esmeralda to free them from recognisable bodies. It’s simply breath taking, and unlike any MECCA art collaboration that has gone before.
MECCA is dedicated to supporting women in the arts, and this is the ninth year they have partnered with NGV to drive their social change movement: M-POWER. I always look forward to seeing who the brand will create with next, and with Hughes it’s a match made in magical beauty heaven.
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