Valentina Vicent - Fenty Beauty

The short version

Art direction at its purest. At Kendo Brands, LVMH’s beauty accelerator in San Francisco, I built the worlds Fenty Beauty packaging grows from: mood boards, hand-drawn textures, custom lettering and concepts for gift sets, collabs and seasonal drops. Every one starts with art: a painting, a design movement, a downtown wall.

4: Fenty brands in one Fentyverse: Beauty, Skin, Hair and Fragrance.
By hand: Every Mini Lip texture, drawn in Procreate.
1st: Fenty Beauty’s first sports partnership: the New York Liberty.
2×: Rihanna, twice: Vita Coco’s ads, then her beauty brand.

01 · Full circle

Hello again, Rihanna

At Vita Coco, I worked on Hydrate Naturally, the ads starring Rihanna. A few years later, I was designing her gloss. Full circle.

I’m an art history nerd who still paints in oils, so I never start with packaging. I start with art: a movement, a museum show, a moment that already moved people. Then I make it something you can hold.

Hydrate Naturally ad for Vita Coco: Rihanna dancing beside the words Viva Vita and a Vita Coco carton — Then: Vita Coco’s Hydrate Naturally, starring Rihanna. Now: her gloss.

Fenty Beauty Gloss Bomb: a tube of shimmering copper gloss with a pale pink cap — Then: Vita Coco’s Hydrate Naturally, starring Rihanna. Now: her gloss.

02 · Fentyverse

Four directions, one Fentyverse

Fentyverse is the whole Fenty family: Beauty, Skin, Hair and Fragrance. Beauty is loud. Hair is clean. Anything that spans them has to hold together without flattening anyone.

For one seasonal range, I pitched four directions. Each one is a mood board, then a second page on how it could land on the box.

Mood boards are collages of other people’s photos, used as reference. The bridges are mine.

Direction 01

Radical Italian Manual

Memphis Milano goes après-ski.

Sottsass shapes and squiggles, frosted over, with Fenty graffiti on top.

Mood board for Radical Italian Manual: Memphis Milano posters, a bold graphic chair, bright patterns and ski scenes — Mood board

Packaging inspiration for Radical Italian Manual: high-gloss pastel boxes, graphic patterns and illustrated tins — On pack: high-gloss pastels, pattern and print

Direction 02

Ivy Legacy Guides

Old money, roughed up.

Clashing rugby stripes by way of Warhol’s pop royals, Basquiat in a striped sweater and a little Riot Grrrl.

Mood board for Ivy Legacy Guides: rugby-stripe sweaters, pop-art portraits, preppy prints and book covers — Mood board

Packaging inspiration for Ivy Legacy Guides: high-contrast striped boxes, rubber bands and punk illustration — On pack: loud stripes, rubber bands, punk drawings

Direction 03

Fenty Fables

A book you could wear.

Bookmarks, margin notes, comic-book heroes and Rihanna lyrics scribbled Basquiat-style.

Mood board for Fenty Fables: a comic-book hero, handwritten annotations, book covers and a fantasy illustration — Mood board

Packaging inspiration for Fenty Fables: sticker-covered cans, handwritten labels, character boxes and bookmarks — On pack: stickers, tape and handwriting

Direction 04

Caribbean Domino Diaries

Island to icon.

Domino tiles, cocoa tones and the desert worlds of Dune.

Mood board for Caribbean Domino Diaries: a portrait in sunglasses, scattered dominoes, desert illustrations and cocoa-toned fabric — Mood board

Packaging inspiration for Caribbean Domino Diaries: matchboxes and coffee bags, kraft-paper finishes and bright pops of colour — On pack: kraft, matchboxes, pops of colour

Where two directions went

From Direction 01The ice

Radical Italian Manual’s frost and après-ski chrome carried onto Glossy Posse, the gloss gift set: graffiti over ice, a box that feels like a ski trip.

Glossy Posse on ice: three Fenty Beauty glosses and a lip liner under black GLOSSY POSSE lettering, against a frosty pink and blue sky — Glossy Posse, on ice.

Two Glossy Posse gift-set boxes with icy, snowy photography, black graffiti scribbles, pink FENTY lettering and three lip gloss tubes each — Two takes on the Glossy Posse box.

From Direction 04The camo route

Caribbean Domino Diaries went off-duty, into camo: Rihanna’s uniform, with a nod to Warhol’s last paintings, across the range.

Then I shrank it onto a backpack the size of your palm, on a neon lanyard. It became the idea everyone remembered.

The Fenty Skin Guava Getaway set on a mirrored plinth in a misty, neon-lit jungle — Guava Getaway, in the jungle.

The camo range lined up: the Fenty Beauty Glossy Posse box, the tiny backpack on a neon lanyard, Fenty Skin Guava Getaway, Fenty Hair The Main Crew and a Fenty Eau de Parfum box — The camo route across the range: Beauty, Skin, Hair and Fragrance.

The tiny camo backpack in glitchy jungle print on a neon yellow lanyard — The tiny backpack.

The tiny backpack clipped to the belt loop of someone’s jeans on a city street at night — Out in the world.

03 · Texture

Drawn by hand, at shelf scale

The Core Lip Sets started on my iPad. I drew every background by hand in Procreate: big, fast marks in the spirit of Cy Twombly that still feel delicate.

Same carton, a different mark, a whole new personality. That’s the difference between packaging that looks designed and packaging that looks made.

Valentina's Procreate canvas while drawing the Mini Lip Set backgrounds — Procreate time-lapse: drawing the Mini Lip backgrounds.

The marks, up close

Four hand-drawn textures

Hand-drawn texture: a white brushed loop over black, threaded with fine pencil scribbles

Hand-drawn texture: loose graphite scribbles over a soft nude brushstroke

Hand-drawn texture: black spray and nude brush sweeps circling into an eye-like swirl

Hand-drawn texture: a pale ribbon of strokes glowing out of smoky black

One carton, six moods Concept

Tap a texture to restyle the carton

Mini Lip Set cartons in three shades with a black brushed loop on a nude ground

Mini Lip Set cartons in three shades with fine graphite scribbles

Mini Lip Set cartons in three shades with black ink brushwork

Mini Lip Set cartons in three shades on a smoky black ground

Mini Lip Set cartons in three shades with a black-and-white brushed swirl

Mini Lip Set cartons in three shades with a soft black spray

The same hand went small: a double-barrel pencil sharpener, and a run of mascara wraps painted with storm skies, smoke and ink.

Sketch board for the double-barrel pencil sharpener: black and nude primary options with a marbled secondary carton — The double-barrel pencil sharpener.

Six mascara carton wraps: storm skies in blue, smoke in black and white, and ink veins on brown — Mascara wraps: storm, smoke and ink.

04 · Type

Shade names, set in type

Fire + Ice is a cooling Gloss Bomb. Three mood-board directions blended into its carton: Sticky Newsprint’s punk xerox, New York Street’s subway tile and chrome, and Iridescent Queen’s holographic light.

Mood board for Sticky Newsprint: xerox textures, a red-haired punk portrait and torn paper type — Mood boardSticky Newsprint · punk xerox

Mood board for New York Street: a heavy-metal album tile, subway tile, chrome texture and a street crowd — Mood boardNew York Street · subway tile and chrome

Mood board for Iridescent Queen: holographic foil, chrome shards and a figure in iridescent light — Mood boardIridescent Queen · holographic light

Blended into one carton

The lettering melts and freezes at once: heavy-metal blackletter with a wink at Robert Frost, who wondered whether the world ends in fire or in ice.

Fire + Ice Gloss Bomb: a tube in a blue and coral frame beside a carton lettered in melting blackletter — Tube and carton.

A hand reaching through flames of orange fire and icy blue, the Fire + Ice texture — The texture, in hand. Base photo: Frankie Mish / Unsplash.

Fire + Ice carton directions in a grid, from blue smoke to open flame — Carton directions, from blue smoke to open flame.

Ed Ruscha paints words like spilled liquid, and he’s one of my heroes. For the Gloss Bomb nylon totes, the shade names became the art: Hot Chocolit melts into swirls, Blaz’d Donut wraps around a donut.

Blaz’d Donut lettering wrapped around and through a pink donut, the type treatment from the Gloss Bomb tote — Blaz’d Donut: the lettering, up close.

Pale pink Gloss Bomb nylon tote printed with a red Blaz’d Donut donut — Final artwork Blaz’d Donut

Pale pink Gloss Bomb nylon tote printed with red Hot Chocolit swirls — Final artwork Hot Chocolit

A woman sitting on a stool with the Hot Chocolit tote over her shoulder — Hot Chocolit, carried. Base photo: Mediamodifier / Unsplash.

05 · Courtside

Gloss goes to the game

Fenty Beauty’s first sports partnership: the WNBA’s New York Liberty. The team’s seafoam green is the Statue of Liberty’s patina, so I started there, then went downtown, to the early-’80s New York of Basquiat and Keith Haring.

Limited Gloss Bomb cartons in basketball leather, graffiti and patina green. Then the swag, clean and vandalized, for the people who’d actually wear it courtside.

New York Liberty Gloss Bomb keychain: a gloss in a seafoam green sleeve with the Liberty crest on the cap and a silver clasp — Final artwork The Gloss Bomb keychain, in Liberty green.

Black New York Liberty hoodie with seafoam green graffiti lettering — The Liberty hoodie.

A fan courtside at a New York Liberty game wearing a black tee with the graffiti Liberty graphic — One of the tees, courtside.

New York Liberty Gloss Bomb carton directions in a grid: basketball leather, jersey, graffiti and a rally flag in seafoam green and black — Carton directions for the limited Gloss Bomb.

Courtside, on the record

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The deal, in the news.

Social post: Rihanna's Fenty Beauty and Fenty Skin are now the official beauty partners of the WNBA's New York Liberty — Official beauty partner of the Liberty.

How to read the tags

Final artwork Went all the way to final artwork.
Concept A proposal, board or exploration.
Mockup My own intervention on a stock photo.
AI mock My own 2026 scene for this page. Not campaign photography, and not made or approved by Kendo Brands or Fenty Beauty.

Tru Alchemy Retinol Reset serum on a stone slab beside an hourglass, crystals and palo santo

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