Asma’s Beauty Case

‘Art lives in the small things’

Asma el Ghalbzouri

Column

October 2025

Asma el Ghalbzouri

worked backstage for years as a hairstylist for major brands and shows, followed by a spell in fashion editorials. She then stepped into the art world – bringing with her an eye for the art of the everyday: ritual, design, fashion, beauty and scent. For See All This, she takes you on a journey through these realms, all joined by one thing: a deep love of beauty and craftsmanship.

Column

October 2025

Let me introduce myself. My name is Asma, and for the past few months I’ve been a contributing editor at See All This. That means I get to take you behind the scenes. To look, listen, observe – and scribble down what I find. Yes, See All This is an art magazine. But art doesn’t live only in white cubes or hushed galleries. Art lives in the small things: in the ritual of a lipstick; in the shape of a perfume bottle; in the fold of a dress sewn with care.

In the Netherlands, a stubborn divide still lingers: art on one side, the applied, everyday on the other. As if beauty, design, fashion and scent were merely incidental – too frivolous for purists. But anyone who truly looks knows better. Craft, ritual, aesthetics: that’s art. It’s life itself, made visible. I was trained in that craft. From the age of seventeen to thirty-two I worked as a fashion and editorial hairstylist. As a young woman I flew to Paris, London, Milan and New York, working backstage at the biggest shows under the guidance of hair giants such as Guido Palau, James Pecis, Odile Gilbert, and our own heroes Rutger van der Heide and Martin ‘the Flying Barber’ Wentzel. I saw wigs woven by hand, hairstyles shaped like sculptures – beauty as craftsmanship and as discipline. Together with the late Sjoerd Didden, one of the most visionary hair- and wig-makers in the Netherlands, I developed a wig for the Avant-Garde category of the Coiffure Awards – a work of hair, vision and imagination.

And yet, somewhere along the way, I found myself in the art world. First via a fashion magazine, where I had to pair an art column with a new writer, and later through events where I connected brands and cultural institutions – something I still love to do. Gradually I noticed a trend: people who declare themselves guardians of art yet distrust every trace of beauty, design or aesthetic pleasure, as if it were too light or too commercial. Whereas it is precisely in colour, scent and texture that human experience comes alive. And while galleries, artists and kindred spirits are actively seeking fertile ground – the kind that brands can offer when curated with integrity and a genuine artistic vision.

So I want to challenge you. Look around your home. At the objects that surround you. What do they do to you? Which ones summon memories, which ones touch your heart? The lipstick your mother once bought you. The dress in which you saw yourself as you wanted to be. The handmade scarf from someone you love. The tie you put on when you feel ready to face the world. That, too, is art. Tangible memories. Objects with a soul.

‘It takes me back to my time in Casablanca: to the hammam, to the scent of orange blossom filling the streets’

Fig 2. Kess Berlin Concealer

Fig 3. L'or et L'argan, MarocMaroc

I often think about the things that soften my days – small works of art that accompany me. My favourite concealer from Kess Berlin, housed in a sleek chrome case, feels like a design object in its own right: functionally minimalist yet full of character. Every detail is right. Or MarocMaroc, a brand I’ve cherished for just over a year. They recently launched a collaboration with the Moroccan artist Myriam Mourabit, who was invited to adorn the bottles with her beautiful Amazigh-inspired designs – a meeting of scent, ritual and heritage. It takes me back to my time in Casablanca: to the hammam, to the scent of orange blossom filling the streets. I had the chance to meet Myriam for a session at the MarocMaroc shop on Van Baerlestraat, and nothing beats speaking in your mother tongue with an artist who shares your background, even when she lives on the other side of the world.

And then there’s Kilian’s Vodka on the Rocks: a perfume I wear when I know an evening will be memorable – icily clear, fresh, with an almost inhumanly pure sensation of glass on skin. You’ll find it at the Skins Cosmetics Lounge, a place I think of as a gallery for scent. Every bottle there is a sculpture, every fragrance an installation. Design, beauty, fashion – these are not sidelines. They are the bridge between art and life itself. Because behind every seemingly simple object stands a maker, a thinker, a pair of talented hands, a vision and a dream. Call it what you will. I call it art.