Le nature del trucco. Forme e sostanze del make-up green

Abstract

The paper examines the semiotic articulation of naturality through a structural analysis of green make-up packaging. The relations this universe establishes with its opposite, that of “traditional” make-up, find manifestation in the way the three visual strategies implemented by make-up brands and identified through the analysis enhance continuity or discontinuity with respect to this figurative universe. An attempt will be made to show the complex discursive construction of nature through often heteroclite discourses within which differentiated isotopes can be found. Still, besides being brand choices that differentially articulate the theme of nature from an aesthetic point of view, each strategy, actual camouflage, rearticulates values: seduction, beauty, health, care. The value systems that emerge, constructed now as opposites now as complementary, are based on deep dynamics and processes of naturalization that explain how our culture construct the natural and, conversely, the cultural.