Beauty brands have been doing artist collabs for a while now, chasing cultural relevance, and most of them feel like exactly what they are: a logo swap, some limited packaging, maybe a pop-up if there’s budget left over. Shiseido Ultimune x VERDY doesn’t quite fit that mould. SHISEIDO’s ULTIMUNE Power Infusing Serum, the brand’s long-running hero product, is now home to VERDY’s first beauty partnership, and the pairing holds up better than most of these tie-ins tend to. There’s a physical activation at Plaza Singapura, but the more interesting story is what happens when a prestige product gets filtered through an artist’s world without losing the thing that made it work in the first place.
The short version: SHISEIDO’s ULTIMUNE franchise has teamed up with Japanese graphic artist VERDY (his first move into beauty) to introduce three characters into the Ultimune universe: VICK, VERDY’s signature panda-rabbit; CAMELLIA, a reworked take on SHISEIDO’s heritage motif; and GIRL, a new character illustrated for the collaboration. Between them, they’re meant to carry SHISEIDO’s “FAST. SLOW. FREE” philosophy into something more character-led and collectable. For a hero product that already has awareness, the goal isn’t visibility. It’s relevance.
What’s the collaboration actually about?
Pairing a Japanese skincare icon with a Japanese graphic artist isn’t a huge stretch on paper, but the fit runs deeper than nationality. VERDY’s visual language (loose linework, warm colour, characters that feel like they’ve always existed) has spent years moving through streetwear, toy culture, fashion collabs, and youth media. It’s design that reads as familiar on first look, even when you’ve never seen the specific piece before. He’s not working to impress anyone. The work is built to connect.
That this is VERDY’s first beauty project says something about intent on both sides. This isn’t a quick licensing arrangement. It’s closer to a bet that SHISEIDO’s messaging around skin strength and glow can sit comfortably next to VERDY’s more optimistic, character-first world.
The three characters each do different work. VICK does most of the emotional lifting: panda-rabbit, instantly likeable, carries the playful register that VERDY’s fans already recognise. CAMELLIA is the anchor back to SHISEIDO itself, a nod to the brand’s own visual history rather than something invented from scratch. GIRL is the newest addition and the riskiest, an original character with no prior fanbase, tasked with making the whole thing feel personal rather than corporate. Together they take the edge off beauty marketing’s usual clinical register.
Why bother with characters at all?
Glow. Confidence. Inner strength. Beauty brands reach for these words constantly, and none of them photograph well or show up in an ingredient list. Characters solve a problem that copywriting can’t: they give an abstract idea a face and a world to live in.
This only works if the characters are doing distinct jobs rather than just multiplying the same message three times. VICK’s optimism doesn’t need CAMELLIA’s heritage nod to land. They’re addressing different audiences within the same campaign, which is a more deliberate use of multi-character branding than it might look like at first glance.
Why it works on social
Recognisable characters travel further on a feed than a serum bottle does. For a product like Ultimune that already has strong brand equity among people who already buy skincare, characters are a way to reach people who wouldn’t stop scrolling for another serum ad but might stop for VICK.
Why are beauty brands doing more of this?
Because it keeps working. Visual distinction in a saturated market, cultural credibility that a straightforward product campaign struggles to buy, and scarcity that gives people something to actually talk about: artist collaborations hit all three without requiring a brand to launch anything genuinely new.
That last part is probably what matters most for SHISEIDO specifically. Ultimune isn’t an awareness problem. It’s a relevance one. Bringing in VERDY opens a door for people who engage with art and street culture first and beauty second, an audience that fashion and lifestyle brands have been courting with this exact playbook for years. Limited, visually distinct, tied to a name people already follow: It’s not a new formula, but Shiseido Ultimune x VERDY runs it cleanly.
What “FAST. SLOW. FREE” is actually trying to say
SHISEIDO frames Ultimune around three ideas: visible results quickly, a slower ageing cycle over time, and the freedom to define beauty on your own terms. It’s not especially poetic language, but it sticks, and it lines up with what a lot of younger skincare buyers say they want: results without complication, anti-ageing messaging that skips the fear tactics, beauty as self-expression rather than correction.
VERDY’s contribution here is mostly tonal. His work makes a slightly technical, three-part brand philosophy feel less like a set of claims and more like something you’d want to be part of. The product hasn’t changed. The story around it has just gotten easier to like.
Why Singapore, specifically?
Singapore makes sense as a launch market because the beauty audience here doesn’t really separate categories the way some markets do. Prestige skincare, designer toys, streetwear, and general lifestyle collabs all get shopped in the same afternoon. A project blending Japanese heritage with contemporary graphic design isn’t an unusual ask here; if anything, it’s familiar territory.
The audience is used to global launches and cross-category collabs landing on their doorstep regularly, so the campaign doesn’t need to spend time explaining itself. It just needs to look and sound right, which it mostly does. Plaza Singapura, as a high-traffic and fairly universal location, gives it access to existing SHISEIDO shoppers and to people who’d recognise VERDY’s work before they’d recognise the Ultimune bottle.
So does it actually land?
Nothing about Shiseido Ultimune x VERDY is trying to reinvent the artist-collaboration playbook. It’s working inside a format that’s already well established (limited editions, character-led storytelling) and executing it without the usual seams showing. SHISEIDO gets a softer visual identity and a shot of cultural freshness; VERDY gets to extend his universe into a new category without diluting what makes his work recognisable in the first place. Neither side is just borrowing the other’s audience for a quick hit.
For Gen Z and younger millennials in particular, the appeal was probably never going to be the serum itself. It’s the sense that a brand understands beauty as one thread in a wider fabric that already includes art, design, fashion, and identity, not a category that sits apart from all of that. Shiseido Ultimune x VERDY isn’t pretending to be a streetwear label or a gallery show. It’s letting one artist’s voice sit next to a genuinely established product, and betting that people will notice the shift in tone. So far, it looks like they have.
