Makeup Guru

Photo: Courtesy of Shu Uemura

Few companies brilliantly fuse art and beauty like Shu Uemura. For its 2009 artist collaboration, the brand teamed up with manga artist Moyocco Anno to create a collection of cleansing oils and makeup tools called the Tokyo Kamon Girls. The packaging is adorned with cool manga drawings and looks groovy on any bathroom sink, but most important, the oils are lightweight and effective. Each of the five facial cleansing oils are named after a character (Sakurako, Tamaki, Tsuruha, Matsuno, and Katsura) and are specially formulated with everything from cherry extract (to help remove dead skin) to bitter orange peel (to help promote circulation) to green-tea extract (to help boost antioxidants). So whether you're acne-prone, wrinkly, or have dull skin, these gentle cleansers can handle it all.

$65 to $75 at Barneys New York, 660 Madison Ave., at 61st St.; 212-833-2007.