Rene Gruau was a French fashion illustrator; he worked for various French magazines in the 1920's and 1930's including Marie Claire and Silhouettes. After the War he began to focus on advertising and in 1949 produced the first of several images for Le Rouge Baiser, a lipstick created by Paul Baudecroix in 1927. This first Rouge Baiser poster showed a blindfolded woman with red lips, and is extremely effective, accentuating the contrast of the black lines and red lips on a pure white background..