To celebrate the launch of Lancome’s collaboration with Lanvin’s Alber Elbaz on a capsule of beautifully packaged make-up bits, Never Underdressed and Harvey Nichols co-hosted an afternoon tea for some of the brand’s biggest fans this week.

Amid cakes and compacts, editor Carrie Tyler, beauty director Joanna McGarry and news editor Harriet Walker chatted to Harvey Nichols’s Paula Reed about Elbaz’s impact on fashion and why all the ladies love him. Chief among those reasons seems to be his innate sense of fun (well, have you seen those illustrations?) and the way he combines that with a classically French sense of sophistication – much like the main ingredients in his range for Lancome, in fact.

Watch our film from the event below - you might want to make sure you have some cake handy first though.

And then click through the gallery for beauty director, Joanna McGarry's ultimate edit of the Alber Elbaz x Lancome collection.