The Art of Collaboration: Maxine Leonard and Valerie Wickes

In an industry that often treats beauty as something to be corrected or refined, Beauty Papers has spent the past decade resisting the instinct of perfection while building a world where image-making is both confrontational and seductive. Founded by Maxine Leonard and Valerie Wickes out of a shared frustration with the limits of traditional publishing, the biannual title has become a tactile object and cultural document that pushes beyond product into something far more subversive. Models like Alex Consani are transformed through powder compacts by Givenchy, Dua Lipa turns publisher with her own zine, and Cate Blanchett reimagines beauty through a cinematic lens. Embracing beauty as art, provocation, and experimentation, Beauty Papers’ covers have become a visual archive of that ethos, lensed by image-makers who understand the power of distortion and reimagination, including Paolo Roversi, Richard Burbridge, Viviane Sassen, Harley Weir, Gabriel Moses, Drew Vickers, Luis Alberto Rodriguez, Zoë Ghertner, and Collier Schorr, among them. In this Models.com video interview shot in their London headquarters, Leonard and Wickes reflect on the tension that sparked the publication, the desire for independence and creative freedom, and the deliberate choice to challenge how beauty is seen, consumed, and understood.