SHADES OF FLAT AND LUSTRE FINISHES
A Harper’s Bazaar x Studio Spelling collaboration
I’m very happy to announce that my new piece made in collaboration with Harper’s Bazaar is finished and revealed in full today! This is Shades of Flat and Lustre Finishes, a 72-piece paint chart inspired by the Harper’s Bazaar archives and available from 12 noon today as a beautiful limited-edition print.
Shades of Flat and Lustre Finishes is a fictional vintage paint chart. It’s a triptych, and it has been revealed gradually, across three issues of Harper’s Bazaar, one chapter at a time. Here it is before I started painting it. I made the paint chart from scratch; I chose and named the colours and it’s very slightly crooked, just like the vintage, hand-typeset charts that I’ve been collecting.
Starting with tiny details I found in the Harper’s Bazaar archive, I’ve built up a picture of the disjointed thoughts, memories and ideas that hover invisibly around the yellow hat, the beautiful shoe, the perfectly manicured hand. Stories are waiting to be told. Clues come and go. There’s beauty and glamour alongside sadness and unease. Follow the phone lines, trace the ribbons, keep an eye on the matches, the letters, the hands, the bird. Watch the sun rise, the night fall and the stars come out. Match up the colours, put together an outfit, a room, a dance, a plan. Throughout it all are the women - silent, still, trapped on the page or behind the screen or by the conventions of their time, but pulsing with ideas, stories, dreams and a vivid sense of their own power and potential.
Here is part one, which was revealed in the September issue of Harper’s Bazaar. It starts with a pen, because I’m telling a story.
Here is part two, revealed in the October issue of the magazine:
And part three, which is revealed for the first time today in the November issue of the magazine!
THE BACKGROUND
This piece has been a year in the making, so I’m going to explain how I got here, starting right at the beginning!
There are some things in the visual world I love so much that I feel a kind of ache when I look at them. The main one for me is the moment in the 1930s when the strange, dream-like work of the European Surrealism crossed over to the mainstream, in particular into American graphic design, and entered the world of lipstick adverts, magazine covers, page layout and typography.
The thing I love so much about this period in design is the atmosphere that springs up when shameless beauty meets unnerving strangeness meets functional design. It feels bold and new and disorientating, and it’s delivered in a way which is straight forward and uncomplicated, which makes it incredibly open-ended and playful. It doesn’t try to tell you what to think but instead it invites your own imagination to take flight, and it’s odd, sometimes very odd, and so exciting to look at. Most of all, I love that it’s knitted into everyday life, not the austere space of the gallery or museum. You see it when you least expect to and this is my favourite way of looking at things.
When I was painting The Cure for Dismal Surroundings back in 2024, my first 1930s paint chart, I started to research the work of Alexey Brodovitch, the legendary art director of Harper’s Bazaar between 1934 and 1958. Brodovitch was a creative genius who transformed 20th century traditions of visual storytelling. His influence on graphic design is to be found everywhere today, but in his time his dynamic use of diagonals, playful typography and abundant white space on the pages of Harper’s Bazaar were radically new ideas which defied all design conventions. His pages were full of movement; he was said to be ‘the man who made the pages dance’. He invited the Surrealists to contribute to the magazine and the issues of the 1930s, 40s and 50s are full of incredible work by artists such as Man Ray, Salvador Dali and Erwin Blumenfeld. I find this era incredibly inspiring. The day I first discovered his work in the library I took a photo, and I’m really glad I did. It’s dated February 1st 2024 and it marks the beginning of my love affair with his work.
I had covers and pages from the Brodovitch era of the magazine pinned to my studio wall when, one bright, sunny morning in 2025, I found a message from Hearst UK, publisher of Harper’s Bazaar, asking if I would be interested in a collaboration. I read the message, looked up at my wall, and felt my heart skip a beat. It’s been a dream come true to work on this project.
What followed was a series of exciting meetings, exchanges of ideas and a huge amount of openness, generosity and support from Harper’s Bazaar, including unlimited access to their extraordinary archive, all of which has resulted in the piece that’s being revealed today. I’ve been totally absorbed in this piece all year and I’m not sure I’ve ever worked so hard. I can feel that the work has taken a leap forward and my head is brimming with ideas and images which will fuel me for a long time to come. I’ve had Alexey Brodovitch at the back of my mind the whole time I’ve been painting; the diagonals, the sense of movement and the odd, surrealist juxtapositions are a tribute to him and his era. The particular combination of his dynamic, rule-breaking graphic design, which is just fizzing with energy, and the complete stillness and restraint of the ice cool, impeccably dressed women, starting wordlessly into the mid-distance, is the thing that I really love. It’s this electric combination that I set out to channel into a new piece of work.
Here are the Harper’s Bazaar articles by Charlotte Brook about the piece.
And here is the article which accompanied the section set of paintings, in the October issue. The brilliant photographer Philip Sinden spent a day in my studio back in June and it was fascinating to watch him work. His photographs have the most beautiful atmospheric light. Here I am at my desk, just acting natural!
In another exciting strand to this collaboration, I’ve also designed a Harper’s Bazaar x Studio Spelling Christmas card. The card has just gone on sale, with 12 huge, beautiful cards for £15. Click here to read more about the project. The cards are sold through the Harper’s Bazaar website, and the button below will take you straight there.
