This living-and-breathing-beauty gig isn’t always mascara, champagne and canapés, you know. Sometimes it’s standing in a soggy park, eyeing enormous fruit sculptures as drizzle turns to droplets not even a fistful of anti-frizz could defy. So much for glamour, huh?
This morning your committed correspondent braved it to meet Ella, the 10-by-five metre woman made of (faux) peaches next to Sydney’s MCA…
But as I dripped before the big, fruity artwork, calculating how many peaches could possibly make up such a thing (there’s a competition going), I couldn’t help but wonder why anyone would bother building it. So I asked Karen Matthews, CEO of Ella Bache, the skincare brand behind Ella.
Turns out Ella was inspired by All Saints actress Jolene Anderson (Erica). “She’s young, down-to-earth and has a love of sport, the outdoors and the lifestyle lived by Australian women,” Matthews explained. “And she’s got gorgeous skin. She’s beautiful, but not in a precious way – she really represents our approach to beauty.”
Then the penny dropped: Ella’s a monumental salute to lusciously soft, plump and glowy skin – and one big, can’t-miss-it reminder that there’s some care involved if we covet it. After all, looking peachy keen really is “a matter of skin health,” said Matthews.
“We want to educate people that they should treat their skin therapist like they would their doctor,” she continued. “Having a facial or a treatment is often seen as a decadent experience rather than an essential. But your skin is a living, changing organ and a beauty therapist understands every layer of it, prescribing products and treatments that make it as healthy as it can be. We need regular check-ups, not just one-off visits, for our changing skins to stay as beautiful as possible.”
Which seems as good a reason for a giant peach woman as any other, when you think about it.
Not to mention another fine justification for filling your diary with as many spa facial dates as possible. I’m sold…
She looks a wee bit creepy- just saying!