Person partially obscured by a floral arrangement against a textured wall.

Custom made flower dress by Sophie Dalglish

Anita Jolles Knows Beauty Begins Underground

To know Anita Jolles is to slow down. Her presence is grounding - even on our video call - and her work  whether on skin or soil speaks of patience, process, and a deep reverence for change. As a seasoned makeup artist and ever learning flora and fauna scholar,, she lives at the intersection of aesthetic expression and natural impermanence. After personal grief reshaped her life, Anita found healing in the quiet rhythm of gardening - and in the soft rituals of care that makeup can offer. Now, her vision of beauty includes rot, resilience, and radical honesty. In a world obsessed with forever bloom, Anita reminds us that there’s poetry in withering too.

PHOTOGRAPHER VIOLAINE CHAPALLAZ @violainechapallaz
CREATIVE DIRECTION / ARTIST & STORYTELLING / PRODUCTION ANITA JOLLES  @anitajolles 
INTERVIEW JESPER GUDBERGSEN @yessirjesper
STYLIST ANNA MALA @aannaammaallaa Using only custom, archive and vintage pieces, as well as pieces by independent designers.
MAKEUP ANITA JOLLES  @anitajolles @artistsunit using @madaracosmetics
HEADPIECE ARTIST SOPHIE DALGLISH @phoafofficial
FLOWER ARTIST DANIELLE KORTEKAAS @daniellekortekaas @maisonbotanique 
NAIL ARTIST DANIEL SMEDEMAN @danielsmedeman @frank_creatives 
FILM AND EDITING MINNIE REINA MADIMIN @minniemadimin
TALENT ANNA MALA @aannaammaallaa MANDY VAN DIJK @mandyyoska @platformagencyamsterdam NIKKI MWENDA @nikkimwenda_ @knownmodelmanagement OGENDA TEN HAAR
RETOUCHING PHOTOKINETIC @photokinetic.postproduction 
PHOTOGRAPHY ASSISTANT ANNE HUTTINGA @anne_huttinga
MAKEUP ASSISTANT ANKE TER HEIDE @anketerheide
PRODUCTION ASSISTANT MILA NUIJENS @mila.nuijens

Anita Jolles does not rush, she observes. She watches closely - a face, a garden, a season shifting in slow motion - before she moves her hands. This kind of presence isn’t accidental; it’s something you learn after loss, after weathering grief, after learning to choose stillness over speed because your body, your soul, gave you no other option.

“I’m a mom of two sons, a gardener, and a creative person through and through,” she tells me. “I paint, I do makeup, and I love bringing beauty to life, whether it’s on canvas, skin, or in the garden.”

What Anita does is beyond just makeup and feels closer to tending. She paints faces like she tends to soil: with care, reverence, and an understanding that life is cyclical, not constant. It makes sense that she recently completed a degree in ecological landscaping and is continuing her knowledge of flora and fauna, not as a pivot away from beauty, but as a deepening of it.

“I’ve always had a big interest in plants, shapes, colors,” she says. “To have a garden and see all the different changes of the year, from the beginning till the end, is magic.” But it’s not just the blossoms that move her. “What I learned over the last couple of years is that there’s also beauty in transience. In the end stage of a plant. I love faces with a story, especially aged faces. There’s so much truth in them.”

“Both makeup and gardening can be deeply meaningful acts of care, and they share striking similarities as forms of healing. The daily process of applying makeup can create grounding, intentional time with oneself — a form of mindful self-contact. And for many, for me as well, it’s a way to reclaim identity, especially for people navigating illness, trauma, gender expression, or self-esteem challenges.”

  • Two images showing red and blue lips against a dark background
    Earrings by Goldiie
  • Person in a white dress standing in a forest setting
    Custom vintage lace dress made by stylist Anna Mala
  • Person wearing a lace headscarf in sepia tone
    Custom vintage lace dress made by stylist Anna Mala
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Anita's work, whether it’s with soil or skin, resists the fantasy of permanence that the beauty industry so often sells. “The industry wants to keep us forever blooming. But in the garden, beauty isn’t permanent - flowers bloom, wilt, rot, and return. There’s no shame in that process.”

When she paints a face, it’s not about masking. It’s about revealing. She says makeup “definitely comes alive” - it breathes, it sculpts, it responds to light and mood. Her hands don’t chase symmetry; they follow a story. “I always observe first before I start. Often I apologize for looking. But it’s because I’m listening, with my eyes.”

It’s this quality of listening to nature, to her life, love, to others and yes, grief, - that has transformed Anita’s life and practice. Her connection to the earth isn’t aesthetic. It’s spiritual. “Everything takes time,” she says. “You can’t rush things. And if it’s not your time, that’s okay. Everything comes at the right moment, you can put your trust in that.”

  • Woman in a dark red dress against a bright red background
     Corset by Nia Topalova, stylists own skirt silver necklaces via Roski Yard, Anita’s mothers gloves. Top by Vita, stylist own tights and shoes Art piece with flowers by Sophie Dalglish
  • Top half of a black and white photo of a dancer in motion, bottom half of a floral arrangement on a white background.
    Flower art by Danielle Kortekaas
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For Anita, the search for slowness was born out of necessity. “It took me ten years to grieve losing my loved ones. You can’t put a timeframe on grief, it comes and goes in many forms. And it took as long as it needed.” In that space of unraveling, she turned to silence, to soil and to stillness. “In the garden, there weren’t people everywhere, no noise, no pressure of social activities seemed to call to me. I had to surrender in order to recognize myself again.”

What she found was a quieter, deeper version of beauty, one that didn’t need to shout. “Being fully connected to that which is valuable is more important than ever. My search for authenticity is still going. I’m still healing. But the most precious gifts are when people truly see you. What you create. Where your discomfort lies. Where you are in your search of being true to yourself.”

This is where her artistry lives now: in the spaces where nature, care, and honesty intersect. She’s clear-eyed about the contradictions of working in a product-heavy industry while being deeply attuned to ecological harm. “The first step is honesty,” she says. “Care begins in truth, not perfection.”

When I ask her what sustainable beauty looks like - beyond the buzzwords - she doesn’t hesitate. “It’s a relationship, not a product.” That’s the thread running through everything she touches: the garden, the skin, the process, the patience. “Beauty,” she says, “is shared, not sold. Like a friend who makes you a scrub from herbs in their yard. A grandmother who teaches you how to oil your skin with what she grew. A ceremony of scent, of slowness, of sunlight,  passed hand to hand, not boxed and branded.” As she puts it so eloquently; “That's why I started last year with a course in herbal medicine. To learn more about processing plants and how you can make it yourself and keep it as pure as possible. Beauty is not a commodity. It is common.”

  • Two people wearing patterned clothing on the left, and a close-up of flowers on a dark background on the right.
     Custom vintage lace look made by stylist Anna Mala and Anita's mother’s vintage jewelry. Painted cape by Anita, resin earrings By Goldiie. Flower on nail designed by Daniel Smedeman

There’s something radical about that vision, especially in a moment of climate chaos, beauty product hysteria and over-consumption - and general burnout. But instead of offering false hope, Anita thinks of daily devotion. “What keeps me going is asking myself every day: What can I do here and now? Eat from local farmers. Don’t shower too long. Take care of my garden. Don’t fly too much. Just be more aware and considered.”

Her gestures are small, but they accumulate, like rain in dry soil. Like time spent looking closely at something the world told you to rush past. Anita reminds us that transformation doesn’t always arrive in loud, dramatic ways. Sometimes it grows slowly, underground, until one day it blooms - not for likes or campaigns, but for its own sake. “Soil whispers: beauty begins underground.”

“If the world listened more to artists and/or gardeners, the pace and priorities of life would change — not just aesthetically, but politically, spiritually, ecologically. These are two groups who observe deeply, work with their hands, and live in conversation with impermanence. They don’t chase control; they cultivate relationship. And change is also a process. You don't have to change everything right away. You can take small steps. Replace one thing every time, so you can implement it in your new way of living.“

  • Two artistic images: one of a person surrounded by foliage, the other with a person framed by red and black floral arrangements.
    Vintage corset and custom made flower dress by Sophie Dalglish

And when I ask her what kind of beauty world she wants to see in the future, she says this: “Hopefully I can teach. And bring art, beauty and nature together for the next generation.” 

It’s not a brand strategy. It’s a calling. And it begins, as all good things do, by looking closely - and listening before you act.

Stories Behind the Story - from the team:

​​Photographer Violaine Chapallaz 
Violaine’s whole being cannot ignore the transience of nature. For her, nature is of utmost importance and ever present in her life, guiding her every step. Within nature, she finds her silence and healing, taking her back to her roots in Switzerland

Headpiece Artist Sophie Dalglish 
“These concepts began with a feeling - that deep sense of connection we experience when we are fully immersed in nature. When you’re in the presence of something so vast and beautiful, it has a way of quietening everything else.  The landscape doesn’t just surround you - it holds you, consumes you, becomes part of you. I began to wonder how that feeling could take on a physical form: what if we didn’t just stand in that beauty, but became part of it? Cocooning the body in and among flowers was a way of exploring that idea - blurring the lines between ourselves and the natural world. It’s about establishing presence, embracing stillness within such magnitude, and imagining the possibility of growing from within. Letting the body become not just something placed in nature, but something that truly belongs to it.”

Stylist & Talent Anna Mala 
“I thought of this collaboration as a weave. In terms of styling, it manifested in the use of hand made textiles as a celebration of craftsmanship. On a metaphorical level, it was a weave of community and friendship brought together by Anita which felt both touching and powerful.”

Flower artist Danielle Kortekaas 
“As a former stylist and fashion editor with a big love for flowers, birds and all species with feathers and all winged creatures I decided some time ago to get a grip on the transience of earthy matters. I started to dry flowers in every form and in all the ways they were presented to me, preserving them and letting them appear in various forms of art. The process of drying flowers is full of surprises. Making art with them requires patience, accuracy and is always a study of shapes, colors and a search for the optimal layered construction. Working with my flowers is so mindful and as a person of detail I feel blessed I can completely lose myself in their beauty.”

Film and visual artist Minnie Reina Madimin
“The interconnection of all life fascinates me more everyday. How one thing might look completely different from another, yet if you use your senses deeply and combine it with understanding of the universe, it’s all the same.

It goes for everything. Anita tells a beautiful story of this interconnectedness between Art, Beauty and Nature and while she brought the team together, she passed that story along even further.”

  • Side-by-side comparison of a person and a leaf with a dark background
    Custom stone necklace made by stylist Anna Mala

Is there a plant, flower, or landscape that feels like your creative twin?
I think that would be the Verbascum nigrum - dense-flowered mullein. symbolize resilience, growth, or the ability to thrive in challenging environments.

@ANITAJOLLES