From left: Professor Augustinus Bader, Sofia Coppola and Charles Rosier (Photo: Keiichiro Nakajima)
Sofia Coppola is navigating a roomful of journalists in Tokyo like a star slightly out of practice. This may be because the event she is attending, hosted by skincare expert Augustinus Bader, is occupied by an unusually high concentration of beauty mavens instead of fashion and film grandees. But formalities quickly melt away to make space for an emotional reunion when Nobuhiko Kitamura — founder of Japanese streetwear label Hysteric Glamour who made a cameo in Coppola’s second feature Lost in Translation 21 years ago — enters the room. As anyone past a certain age knows, the kind of ardent friendship common to our younger days rarely happens again once youth is gone. Yet, Kitamura remains a steadfast confidante, a living reminder that Japan, where Coppola propelled its candescent capital to greater fame through the lens, will always be her home.
Of all the films she produced that have inspired quiet wonder and wanderlust, nothing induces yearning like her smashing sophomore drama played by Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson, whose sense of loneliness and dislocation is so palpable that we too long to view a hypnagogic Tokyo as they do. Having traced the syntax of the dichotomous city and its people, the auteur presented an urban reverie we cannot stop seeing. Coppola loves ikebana, the iridescent ocean of night-time neons in Akihabara, and the surrounding temples that are in contrast to it. She was so enamoured of her stay at Shinjuku’s Park Hyatt hotel and its New York-style jazz bar during the promotional tour of The Virgin Suicides that she shot her runaway hit Lost in Translation there. The animated wonderland lends itself to the musings of a foreigner, whether one is promoting a cinematic tear-jerker or a tinted lip balm.
“I’m glad to be back at my happy place. I’ve always had an appreciation for Japan and its culture. My dad loves [Akira] Kurosawa’s films, so I grew up seeing them, which made a big impression. The two even did a commercial for Suntory, and that’s where I got the [original] idea for Lost,” admits Coppola, who used to spend Christmas in Kyoto as a child and discovered Hello Kitty when she was eight.
Raised in California’s Napa Valley and wherever her titan of a filmmaker father Francis Ford happened to be shooting, Coppola has nurtured a perfect visual pitch for her onscreen personas. Confined in gilded cages, the melancholic women she consistently puts at our eye level — be it the queen consort of France marooned in isolation (Marie Antoinette) or Elvis’ child bride who shapes herself into his ideal of womanhood (Priscilla) — tread a path to liberation that is intricately woven with the fabric of fashion. Details like smeared mascara, teetering beehive hair or an oversized wedding dress is no accident but an indication of a character’s development. Through the director’s careful curation, beauty is the farthest thing from frivolity. “I don’t understand why looking at superficiality makes you superficial,” confesses Coppola in a magazine article earlier this year.
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Thus, there is nothing fatuous about making an attempt to improve our mood and outlook, given the despair and grimness of our current affairs. Coppola’s reason for partnering with Augustinus Bader, named after the German professor from Leipzig University who co-founded the business with French biotech investor Charles Rosier, was simple: Her favourite lipstick from Monoprix in Paris was discontinued and she has always been a devotee of the Bader Lip Balm. Just as the filmmaker is adept at parlaying her experiences into a script, she is also assertive of what goes into making a chapstick, whose lingering effect can be galvanising, like the memory of a beach getaway or a mother’s affection.
“I wrote a note to Professor Bader and asked if he’d consider making a balm with my favourite tint. I wanted something moisturising, non-sticky and sheer enough that you can put on without a mirror. When he said yes, I was really happy,” enthuses Coppola, who lent her tastemaker credentials to the six-year-old skincare stalwart that has set up about 135 stores across Asia. She was after the look of Nastassja Kinski’s titular character in Roman Polanski’s 1979 Tess of the d’Urbervilles, who achieved perfectly berry-stained lips while nibbling on strawberries.
Eighteen months and a few swatch trials later, a trio of chapped-lip reliefs emblazoned with Coppola’s name on the sleek cylindrical packaging she helped create was launched. The retired Monoprix colour was the prototype of Shade 1, an everyday deep pink hue you can swipe on unthinkingly. The other two are a summery coral evocative of an island holiday and a burnt earthy plum that clings on like the residue of a dark cherry topping a sundae. Nourished with shea butter, vitamin E and candelilla wax, they protect your pout with the brand’s patented Trigger Factor Complex (TFC8) technology, which comprises natural amino acids, high-grade vitamins and synthesised molecules that encourage optimal cell repair. Adamant against the friction of coffee cups and champagne glasses, these pick-me-ups may require reapplication throughout the day but that simply implies one is, in fact, eating, kissing and actually living life.
Lip reading
A breeding ground for trends, the modern Japanese beauty industry, or J-beauty, beholds a booming landscape focused on multi-step facial rituals rooted in time-honoured traditions and science. A waning economy is not smudging the glow of the country’s personal care market, projected to reach more than US$47 million (RM204.32 million) by the end of the year. Parachuting into a society that peddles a holistic approach to well-being is, perhaps, not too foreign a challenge for Augustinus Bader, which touts high-tech formulas backed by 30 years of innovation in stem cells.
“When we think about Japan, we think about a population that is very demanding, research-forward and has a great attachment to their craft. Our brand resonates with the Japanese because we have a proprietary ingredient created from disruptive technology. [Launching here] was a natural choice because of Sofia’s strong bond with the country. Hopefully, when consumers look at the tinted balms, which are entryways into cosmetics, they will also take interest in the origins of our ground-breaking skincare,” says CEO Rosier.
A lippy may suggest itself as a relatively low-ticket indulgence but that little bullet you constantly pull out of your bag turns the routine task of swiping into a considered gesture. Makeup empowers people to present themselves in exactly the way they choose and decide what ultimately contributes to their self-esteem.
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“As a person who’s very protective of her well-being and image, Sofia, I’m sure, doesn’t want to associate herself with things she’s not 100% aligned with. To be honest, we weren’t sure if we could maintain the stability of the TFC8 because it’s an active ingredient but all of us were quite persistent to make it happen,” addresses the French financier about their fortuitous partnership in a three-way interview at Bvlgari Hotel Tokyo, the only place Augustinus Bader products are stocked in the country.
“Everything came very organically, down to the point of putting her name on the packaging. She didn’t say, ‘I’d like to collaborate with you’ but instead, ‘it’d be great to see the lip balm exist’ because it was initially a personal request. Our brand history did not involve a lot of in-your-face promotions but it was made up of organic moments, just like how Sofia discovered us through her friends and makeup artist.”
Serendipity also played a serious role in the encounter between the founders who “did not mean to meet” as they came from different fields. The two-man alliance started with a transformative wound gel Bader developed in 2008 that healed a four-year-old girl with third-degree burns, thus avoiding the need for surgery or grafting. Curious, Rosier asked the scientist, when they met at a billionaire’s dinner party, if he could also devise solutions to slow ageing apart from treating traumatic injuries.
A confident nod led to two hero moisturisers — The Cream, and the upgraded, thicker version, The Rich Cream — that highlight the signature TFC8, which also speeds up one’s innate skin regenerative process. Through word-of-mouth endorsements by celebrity friends and fortified investments from LVMH mogul Antoine Arnault as well as Diageo chairman Javier Ferrán Larraz, Augustinus Bader braved through severe capital issues to emerge a staple on the dresser of former French first lady Carla Bruni as well as A-listers such as Demi Moore, Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Victoria Beckham and Gwyneth Paltrow.
“I’m thankful for all the help we’ve received along the way. The probability for an independent brand like us to survive is very minimal because there may be five or 10 brands being created every day. In the first two years of our existence, three different finance directors resigned because we were weeks from bankruptcy. I don’t take our success for granted at all,” admits Rosier.
Early shoutouts of Augustinus Bader did not involve any high-wattage personalities because the company just did not have the budget. “To fund our venture, I was forced to sell my flat in London and liquidate all my assets and savings,” recalls the businessman, who nearly sold off his Paris apartment too, until luck knocked on the door.
“It happened to be the serial investor and founder of Impala Group Jacques Veyrat. He immediately asked why I was selling my flat so I told him about professor [Bader] and how he’s the only person in the world who had found a way to trigger stem cells that cure burns with no scars. At the end of his visit, Veyrat put money into the company, and we launched in February 2018. He probably thought the project must mean something because I was obviously giving up the last thing I had,” he adds.
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Fortunately, the narrative of skincare — once grappled with products and procedures that attempt to deny the inevitability of the future — has evolved. With the ongoing attention on self-healing, Augustinus Bader began fulfilling the needs of consumers who were more mindful about what goes into a night jar and how a clear complexion is a manifestation and proof of our accumulated lifestyle. Wellness, no longer another obligation to fit into our schedules, is the new infallible beauty barometer.
“People always thought luxury is unachievable except for a few things but at its most fundamental, it fulfils a basic need, like the ability to eat a nourishing meal or enjoy a good night’s sleep. Therefore, skincare that is healthy for you should be a viable choice too. Concepts such as longevity and healing are synonymous to Japanese and, broadly, Asian culture. We’re just using technology to make it more accessible to the people,” explains the ruddy-cheeked Bader who completed his stint at medical schools in Chieti, Italy; Inselspital, Switzerland; and Harvard, the US. Before formulating the bestselling creams, he had never used any facial salves in his life.
“It has been discovered that 93% of our future is actually the way we live, and only 7% is predetermined by our genes. The science in our creams is just an epigenetic signal that influences slightly and improves what our bodies can do,” asserts the researcher, whose work is guided by the philosophy that our skin already contains all it needs for renewal. “The biggest reward is seeing a scientific, laboratory-based idea come to life and be applied. To quote Thomas Edison, I don’t want to invent things that nobody can use.”
Shade shifter
It is impossible to grow up in a filmmaking dynasty — in which the Oscars is a family affair; grandfather Carmine Valentino scored the seminal The Godfather trilogy; actors Jason Schwartzman as well as Nicolas Cage are cousins — and not develop an appetite for living. Coppola did not excel academically because, as the offspring of the Hollywood elite, she had to move a lot and miss school. But on the subject of taste, though, she was precociously articulate. The former intern at Chanel, during Karl Lagerfeld’s era, even dreamt of an alternative life as the editor of a magazine like American sartorialist Diana Vreeland, who helmed Vogue in the 1960s.
“It’s this idea of experimenting that I enjoy, whether it is related to publishing or taking some time off from a busy day. I like to go out into the world and have an alone moment where you are just doing something only for yourself,” says Coppola, who relished side projects like putting together her coffee table book Sofia Coppola Archive 1999-2023 — which chronicles her career with elliptical introductions to her oeuvre, a cascade of polaroids, handwritten notes and costume sketches — and a capsule collection for Barrie, the Scottish cashmere company owned by Chanel.
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As evinced by Coppola’s appearance on the Cannes Croisette in a custom Alaïa dress or men’s Charvet shirt when commanding a crew, style means clothes that look heedlessly flung on rather than anxiously picked out. Colour connotes freedom, the dispelling assumption about identity, whether she is concocting the look of another cinematic heroine in the makeup trailer on set or letting Dick Page, the cosmetic consigliere for her Met Gala 2024 getup, experiment on her chiselled features. Working with Augustinus Bader, another “fun project”, she admits, has allowed her to revisit these playtimes.
“It always gives me energy, knowing how curiosity and enthusiasm fuel creativity. I just want to lead by example and hope my teenage daughters [popstar-in-the-making Romy and Cosima Mars] see my values, how I live, and do the things I love. I’m not on TikTok but looking at them reminds me to be more open to opportunities, although they did warn that I shouldn’t buy another lip balm,” admits Coppola.
The director fills lustrous canvasses with privileged people and milieus but is also gently critical of the bubble they live in. Perhaps that resonates with Coppola in real life, who — despite her prestigious bloodline — never rests on her laurels while the world’s watchful eye is trained on her. Rosier is one of many who can attest to her tenacity as a fastidious curator. “Her work speaks for itself and she’s not an influencer who uses her platform to prove anything. I think Sofia’s universe attracts the respect of many people, including the team at Augustinus Bader, because of her strong integrity.”
Coppola returns the compliment with a grateful smile. “I grew up thinking so much about identity because my mother, Eleanor, was such a vision. She taught me how to be real, strong and figure out what kind of woman I wanted to be. Makeup is a big part of that exploration too — you put yourself out there and realise what type of person you can become.”
At the end of our conversation, the filmmaker tells us she has made plans to stop by the 120-year-old Itoya stationery store in Ginza, take in the city’s manifold sights, as well as catch up with Kitamura and their mutual friend, writer and actor Kunichi Nomura, who also appeared briefly in Lost.
Sofia Coppola is going to paint the town red — and we know exactly whose shade she will be wearing.
Sofia Coppola x Augustinus Bader tinted lip balms are available at all Kens Apothecary stores.
This article first appeared on Sept 2, 2024 in The Edge Malaysia.
