Beauty: Kisses from Japan

Shiseido Rouge. Photo / Supplied

Makeup is all about the lips this season, but no other cosmetic company has as boldly backed this prescription as Shiseido.

The premier Japanese brand has just launched its winter collection. It contains 20 lip shades, but no new eyeshadows or mascaras supplement the range called Perfect Rouge.

In makeup marketing terms, where massive dollars are spent, that's a huge gamble, but Shiseido is so confident and committed to this new lipstick formula that it determined Perfect Rouge should stand alone.

Artistic director Dick Page, a veteran fashion show collaborator with the likes of Marc Jacobs, has worked on delivering an enticing shade range, but it's the true, intense colours that Shiseido is most excited about.

To illustrate the point, the company flew a top team out from Japan to host a special preview at Sydney's Ivy complex, where they took over Uccello, a hip new CBD rooftop poolside restaurant New Zealand visitors should check out. There, beautifully made-up synchronised swimmers went through their paces, bringing a touch of old Hollywood glam to the 1980s-decor of the black-and-white upholstered poolside cabanas with their chrome yellow lanterns. Given that Shiseido is betting on now being the time for lipstick to take centre-stage again, it was no accident that its presentation nodded to those other eras when, whether swimming or sunning, lipstick was de rigueur.

"Women are over lipgloss all the time and what we're saying here is let's go back and take another look at lipstick," Shiseido makeup brand manager Katsura Kouzu explains. "When they hear the term 'red lipstick' they think 'formal occasion with a little black dress', but you can do it casually, with jeans and T-shirts."

A lot rests for the company on whether the jeans-wearing, gloss-favouring generation agrees. It's 80 years since Shiseido was among the pioneers of lipstick sales. (Guerlain claims credit for the first colour sticks back at the turn of last century, but it took a couple of decades for the new-fangled application to catch on both in the East and the West.

It wasn't until 1952 that the mass market really got carried away with bold lips, with the hugely successful launch of Revlon's Fire and Ice red lipstick, which for the first time saw a company use the same shade to go with a nail polish, the forerunner of today's colour collections.

Now lipstick is taken for granted, but Shiseido is hoping its investment in colour science technology will see it coveted anew. A patented translucent red pigment in the lipstick reflects only red light, even when exposed to other light, such as ultraviolet. The upshot is said to be more intense colours in a "hydro-wrap" formula designed to add smoothness and lock-in moisture to lips.

"Because of the smooth texture it will become a must-have," predicts Kouzu.

With Perfect Rouge, which ranges from nudes through pinks, fuchsia and berries and an out-there orange to the signature deep-red shade, Dragon, the aim is vibrant colours that stay true, rather than go cloudy over time.

Dragon looks different on different people, Kouzu says, but one constant is the red pigment which, combined with light technology, allows the colour to look equally strong whether worn inside or outside.

That trick of the light is picked up in Perfect Rouge's red-black iridescent canister. Shiseido's very Japanese attention to subtle detail also sees the canister ever-so-subtly shaped to reflect the camellia that is the brand's logo.

That stylised symbol was first adopted in 1872 when the company's artistic founder sketched it, many decades before Coco Chanel also pinned the flower to her lapel and label.

Shiseido executives are proud of their heritage and have chosen a receptive season to test their theory of lipstick supremacy.

The company's timely formula is bold and simple: "Bring the focus back to the lips."