La Prairie’s Cult Cream Relaunches with Help from Designer Sabine Marcelis
La Prairie’s bestselling Skin Caviar Luxe Cream certainly sounds expensive—and it is, at $595 for 1.7 ounces. And now the iconic face cream is getting a makeover. For its 25th anniversary, the Swiss skin-care brand is relaunching Skin Caviar Luxe Cream with a new formulation and a redesigned jar in recycled and recyclable glass. But one thing won’t be changing: The packaging is in the same striking cobalt blue as the one used since 1982. “That color was actually gifted to La Prairie by the artist Niki de Saint Phalle,” says Sabine Marcelis, the Rotterdam, Netherlands–based designer who has been collaborating with La Prairie on the relaunch.
Earlier this year, Marcelis, who was named Designer of the Year at ELLE DECOR’s 2023 International Design Awards, created the Cobalt House, an immersive pavilion that premiered at the La Prairie VIP Collectors Lounge at Art Basel in Switzerland. Visitors passed through a corridor in laminated cobalt glass until they reached a cozy cream-colored inner space filled with curves. “Light, color, and material are three things I always revert back to,” Marcelis says. “You are guided through a really intense blue glass space, and then you reach the interior with soft flowing curtains and a custom sofa in a curving shape that almost feels like a swoop of the luxe cream itself. It’s the first sofa I’ve ever designed—it’s funny that it was for a skin-care company and not a furniture brand.”
Variations on the Cobalt House will be popping up in cities around the globe this fall, including Toronto, Beijing, Hong Kong, Sydney, Munich, and Madrid. Marcelis has also created an accompanying limited-edition tray, timed for the launch of the new Skin Caviar Luxe Cream this month. Only 300 editions of the vanity tray have been produced, each signed and numbered and consisting of a quartzite and cobalt resin tray that swivels to reveal a quartzite spatula.
To design the tray, Marcelis was inspired by the cream’s signature jar in cobalt—a hue that goes back to an accidental encounter. In 1982, La Prairie’s New York studio was developing packaging for the line and working out of the same office as de Saint Phalle. The artist suggested her favorite shade of blue for the jars. “The color has such a presence, and I definitely wanted to use it for the tray,” Marcelis says. “I created a cobalt resin base that is balanced out with the natural quartzite top.”
For Marcelis, whose colorful designs have appeared on the cover of ELLE DECOR and in a collaboration with Ikea, the La Prairie collaboration offered an opportunity to try something unique. “It was so different from anything I’ve ever approached,” she says. “It’s a design that needs to be in contact both with the product and with your face and hand. For me, it was an exploration of how geometry and organic shapes can merge together.”
At $1,990 the tray is an investment—but consider that it’s a work of art, and comes with a 1.7-ounce jar of caviar cream. It’s the perfect gift to cheer anyone who is feeling blue.
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