Truly wicked: MAC and Disney unleash Venomous Villains

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If the reaction in this writer’s house is anything to go by (and we don’t get too much wrong) MAC is onto yet another winner with its new Venomous Villains collection, created in partnership with Disney.

The line, which features four mini-collections themed around One Hundred and One Dalmatians’ Cruella de Vil, Snow White’s Evil Queen, Sleeping Beauty’s Maleficent and The Princess and the Frog’s Dr Facilier, triggered an unseemly three-way scrum yesterday between all the females who reside chez Mann (age range 3-40).

MAC_Venomous_VillainsAlas, I am sadly used to going toe-to-toe with my elder daughter over the latest must-have lip glosses, but it was an entirely new experience having to wrestle make-up out of my pre-schooler’s hot little hands. And also a little surprising: like most of her peers, she is nigh-on obsessed with the (frankly saccharine) Disney Princesses. What then, could possibly be the attraction of their various nemeses?

“Disney has always created iconic ingénues, but their counterparts, the villains, are just as memorable,” offered MAC Senior Vice President and Creative Director James Gager, by way of explanation. “Everybody loves a villain and wants to take a bite of forbidden fruit from time to time.”

Or as this writer’s elder daughter put it: “It’s way more fun to be a baddie, Mum,” adding hurriedly at my appalled expression, “not in real life though.”

She’s right, of course. We all need a little escapism now and then, and MAC has been smart to avoid the obvious easy option (the Disney Princesses) and tap into the enduring appeal of the bad boy – and girls – in the form of the rather fabulous Disney Villains instead.

Even nice girls have a naughty side (real or imagined!) and this collection delivers perfectly on the need to indulge it. As Mae West famously said: “Good girls go to heaven; bad girls go everywhere.” Presumably with a Maleficent lipstick in their handbag.