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Last week, online media went gaga for the "fact" that for the first time ever, luxe shoe brand Christian Louboutin, has appointed a plus-size, utterly gorgeous, 27 year-old, French model Clementine Desseaux, as the new face of their first-ever lipstick range (which, by the way, is what I want for Christmas).
The brand launched a nail lacquer range in 2014, and now seems to be branching into other cosmetics. What will be next: maybe a killer mascara? Oh, yes please.
Jezebel, Huffington Post and various other sites reported the news, but it turns out this story was but a figment of our imagination. The model merely posted the below video of her loving the new red Louboutin lipstick. Louboutin liked the video and reposted it to Instagram - never actually officially stating that it's for an official campaign. “Clémentine Desseaux was gifted a lipstick and she was so excited that she posted a video on her Instagram,” said a Christian Louboutin. “LouboutinWorld loved the clip and reposted, much like many other Instagram users’ content — lip or otherwise.”
Whoops.
Perhaps we wanted it to be true. Plus-size models don't feature in beauty campaigns. They just don't. Here and there in fashion ads, or on runways, but hardly ever in cosmetics campaigns.
So, we all failed here when it comes to our journalistic integrity - not checking and re-checking all the facts. But maybe this taught us an even better lesson as Refinery29 says. It has hopefully opened the eyes of people everywhere and especially of cosmetics brands, showing that people want to see full figured women fronting beauty campaigns. The support for Desseaux was so overwhelming, that this is now undeniable.
