Founded in Ginza, Tokyo, in 1872, Shiseido has spent 154 years shaping expressions of beauty not only through cosmetics, but also through advertising, graphic design, typography, copywriting, and makeup. Looking across this history reveals how the idea of beauty has been interpreted through the visual language of each era. Now, visitors are invited to explore that vast archive and discover what resonates with them today.

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SHISEIDO’s limited-time experiential event Dig? opened at Ginza Sony Park in Tokyo on September 11, 2026, and runs through September 20. The event remixes the expressions of beauty that SHISEIDO has created across generations through the lens of contemporary culture.

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The Japanese title, Diguru?, comes from the idea of “digging”—a term familiar in music and other cultural scenes for searching through the past, guided by personal instinct, to uncover something new. From the revival of Y2K aesthetics to renewed interest in vinyl records, film cameras, and vintage fashion, younger generations are increasingly rediscovering the past through their own contemporary sensibilities.

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Dig? follows the same impulse. The experience extends beyond learning about Shiseido’s history chronologically. Visitors encounter past advertisements, select words and typography, create their own goods, and eventually bring elements of the archive onto themselves through makeup. In the process, the viewer becomes an active participant in reinterpreting the archive.

Immersed in Historic Advertising: “Dig the Roots?”

Spanning the first and second floors, “Dig the Roots?” explores SHISEIDO’s advertising collection created across different eras.

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This is not an archive presented as a quiet sequence of framed advertisements. Bold imagery, colors, typography, and copy expand throughout the space, allowing visitors to walk among—and almost become immersed in—SHISEIDO’s visual history.

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As eras change, so do representations of women, approaches to makeup, and the language of advertising. Yet looking back from the present also reveals colors, graphics, and words that still feel remarkably fresh, transcending the periods in which they were originally created.

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The starting point is personal: not which advertisement is historically the most important, but which one captures your attention. Dig? begins by inviting each visitor to explore the archive through their own instincts.

Choosing Shiseido’s Letters: Turning the Archive Into Something of Your Own

On the third floor, “Dig the Goods?” transforms the archive from something to observe into something visitors can select and combine themselves.

A total of 40 limited-edition items remix designs and words drawn from historic advertisements. Room-key tags, stickers, masking tape, double keychains, clear pouches, and other objects are available, with visitors able to select one item that appeals to them.

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Even more intriguing is the opportunity to create original items using Shiseido typefaces.

Visitors can choose from eight typefaces that have appeared throughout the brand’s advertising history, pairing them with Japanese words such as bi (beauty), yuwaku (temptation), yuki (snow), hana (flower), and ame (rain). The characters themselves become graphic elements applied to T-shirts and tote bags.

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Instead of simply viewing typography preserved within a corporate archive, visitors select it and bring it into their own lives. It is a point of contact between a design language cultivated over generations and an individual’s present-day sensibility.

Bringing Advertising’s Beauty Onto the Face: “Dig the Makeup?”

On the fourth floor, the reinterpretation of the archive moves even closer to the body.

“Dig the Makeup?” offers original makeup looks inspired by designs and items that have appeared throughout SHISEIDO’s advertising history, remixed for the present. The latest holiday collection is also available to experience, allowing visitors to encounter expressions from the past through makeup itself.

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Looking at a color in an advertisement and placing that same color on your own face are two different encounters with the archive. Once the body becomes part of the experience, its meaning shifts.

The aim is to select elements that resonate personally and translate them onto oneself today. Here, the act of “digging” becomes an act of makeup.

TOMO KOIZUMI’s Ruffles Expand SHISEIDO’s Present

Ahead of the limited release of SHISEIDO’s 2026 holiday collection, GINZA WONDER × TOMO KOIZUMI, on October 1, the venue also presents a selection of dresses by TOMO KOIZUMI.

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Constructed from layers of vivid ruffles, the dresses embody the distinctive visual language designer Tomo Koizumi has developed through his work. Displayed alongside advertising expressions created by SHISEIDO over the decades, these contemporary creations introduce a continuum between past and present.

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The soundtrack heard throughout the venue adds another layer to that dialogue. During the exhibition, the space features audio from a DJ performance by tofubeats presented at the opening event on September 10. The mix incorporates songs from Shiseido commercials across the decades, including Kimi no Hitomi wa 10000 Volt, used in the company’s 150th-anniversary commercial, and Megumi no Hito, which has experienced renewed popularity in recent years.

Advertising, fashion, music, and makeup—forms of expression accumulated across different moments in Shiseido’s history—are connected once again through contemporary culture.

An Archive Is Also a Place to Find What Comes Next

See the advertisements in “Dig the Roots?”

Choose words and typefaces in “Dig the Goods?”

Bring colors and expressions onto yourself in “Dig the Makeup?”

As visitors move upward through Ginza Sony Park, the distance between Shiseido’s archive and the individual gradually narrows.

For a brand with a history spanning 154 years, the archive is vast. Yet Dig? draws attention to something beyond its sheer scale and longevity: finding something in the past that speaks to you, then selecting it again through a contemporary sensibility so that another expression can emerge.

Born in Ginza and shaped by generations of advertising and design, Shiseido has left behind visual records of how beauty has been imagined across different eras. Its archive preserves that past while also offering material from which the next expression of beauty can be imagined.