Chaire MANE
The MANE Chair, hosted at the Institut Français de la Mode, explores the concept of beauty as a subjective and constructed notion, embedded in norms, beliefs, and cultural practices, and subject to significant interindividual variations. It aims to promote inclusivity in business practices within fashion and beauty by fostering collective reflection on how beauty is conceptualized and represented across different cultures.
The Chair is a research and teaching program open to diverse audiences: companies and universities, professionals, academic researchers, doctoral candidates, and students. It offers a certified lecture series at IFM, as well as an annual challenge open to students worldwide to promote cultural exchange and international collaboration (e.g., NYU Stern Business School and Fundação Getulio Vargas).
All the Chair’s work is regularly published on our website and in the press, and will be synthesized in the collective work Beauties, forthcoming.
The cultural system of Aesthetics
By examining the diversity of conceptions and practices related to beauty around the world, the MANE Chair adopts a broad definition of beautification. It focuses on why and how individuals “make themselves beautiful” in different cultures, with the accessories, adornments, and ornamentations—whether natural or artificial—used to enhance one's image and appearance.
The Chair provides comprehensive documentation and understanding of the diversity of practices, beliefs, norms, and habits related to beautification. It highlights the existence of often implicit and unconscious thoughts or rules that guide judgments of products, scents, images, and brand messaging.
This approach allows for questioning the movement of global cultural standardization and promoting an inclusive approach to beauty that benefits economic players in the industry, such as brands, suppliers, distributors, and media.
Cultural Footprint in worldwide beauty industry
Defined in June 2013 by a group of experts from UNESCO, the OECD, the International Organization of La Francophonie, French ministries, companies, and civil society, the "cultural footprint" refers to "the set of positive or negative externalities generated on the cultural environment by the actions of an agent." By exploring the cultural footprint left by the beauty industry, the Chair examines the impact of brands and marketing practices (advertisements, choice of brand ambassadors, product launches, etc.) on the establishment of standardized beauty norms worldwide. It studies the normative frameworks that marketing has progressively imposed across different cultures and analyses their impact on more or less vulnerable populations.
A MANE certified program will be offered by the Chair to participants in order to deepen their knowledge of beauty and diversity. The program consists of a variety of courses, workshops, conferences, and a day of reflection.
Myth and Ideals : the faces of the beauty industry
This course, taught by Sarah Banon, Assistant Professor at IFM, defines the notion of beauty, from its philosophical roots to its commodification by the fashion and luxury industries. Through a social, cultural, and political lens, and supported by contemporary examples, the course analyzes beauty standards as expressions of dominant and alienating frameworks, while also emphasizing how issues related to beauty can be emancipating and encourage diversity.
Sensory Seminar – Workshop on Perfume Creation
This olfactory workshop is led by Frédéric Walter, renowned consultant and perfumer. The primary objective is to explore and deeply analyse olfactory families, as well as the symbolic and cultural representations inherently associated with them. This seminar offer a unique opportunity to decipher the sensory codes of perfume while developing a nuanced understanding of the cognitive and emotional mechanisms involved in the olfactory experience.
Open to management students from around the world, the Diversity in Beauty challenge is organized annually by the Institut Français de la Mode, running from September to December. Students are grouped into mixed teams, comprising participants from various countries and institutions. They are tasked with exploring a practice or belief related to beauty that is specific to a social group, culture or subculture, or community. All teams are guided by professionals from MANE, as well as faculty researchers from several institutions, including the Institut Français de la Mode (Dr. Alice Audrezet, Dr. Caroline Ardelet) and NYU Stern Business School (Dr. Thomaï Serdari). Following an oral presentation held at the Institut Français de la Mode in December, the best projects are selected to be presented in New York at MANE's Creative Center on Madison Avenue.
To better address the topics of beauty and diversity, we follow two main lines of analysis: a deep understanding of the diversity of beauty worldwide and the cultural reasons behind it; and how the beauty industry, along with society, social systems, and economies, impact beauty standards.
1. Embracing Diversity
Documenting the diversity of beauty standards and practices around the world and understanding the underlying reasons
Globalization, particularly through the media, highlights global standards, often Westernized, yet local cultural identities continue to exist, creating a rich cultural syncretism.
- Can beauty have a new face?
- What determines the adoption or rejection of Western standards? The case of Brazil
- From divine to sacrilegious: the role of religions, myths, and local traditions in the adoption of global representations of perfume and cosmetics
- Is the appropriation of Western beauty standards shaped by local and cultural relationships to the body, hygiene, and medicine?
- The reinterpretation of local cultural elements by luxury brands and their reception by consumers: the example of French luxury houses in China.
2. Shaping Standards
Understanding how the industry constructs and deconstructs beauty norms and standards worldwide.
Beauty standards are not merely a reflection of individual preferences but are also shaped by social, economic, and media systems. This section explores how the beauty industry, through its discourse and symbols, influences and transforms these standards on a global scale:
- Impact of the discursive and symbolic apparatus used by the beauty industry
- The industries that are transforming the world of beauty
- A touch of optimism? The shift towards inclusion and diversity in practices
