If you’ve read up on our global spokesmodel and Brand Ambassador Karlie Kloss, you know she’s busy. Beyond appearing in some of our biggest campaigns—Pure Color Envy Lipstick, Double Wear foundation and Revitalizing Supreme+ moisturizer, to name a few—she has an action-packed YouTube channel, hosts the hit show Project Runway, and, perhaps most impactfully, is founder of her own nonprofit, Kode With Klossy.

For the past two summers, Estée Lauder has had the pleasure of partnering with Kode With Klossy on its two-week coding camps for young women ages 13-18. The summer of 2020 brought its own unique set of challenges, but the camp scholars worked through them flawlessly. We gave them an assignment to redesign the landing page of EsteeLauder.com, focusing on Karlie’s Pure Color Envy Lipstick campaign. The girls put their new coding skills to work in the most creative ways, bringing splashes of color, personality, and engaging visual imagery to the fore, and wowing our panel of judges comprised of executives from the Estée Lauder Online and Creative teams.

We’re thrilled to share the winning landing page here, and tell you a little more about its designer, Mericel, who has long been fascinated by the intersection of beauty and technology. “When I was two years old, I would sneak into my mom's makeup bag and play with her precious Estée Lauder lipsticks,” she admits. “I thought I was so discreet until she would catch me frantically trying to rub the pigment off my face with water and toilet paper.” [Editor’s Note: The Estée Lauder brand love clearly runs deep—“Discreet” is one of our best-selling Envy Lipstick shades and is featured prominently in Mericel’s design!]

In addition to her longstanding passion for beauty, Mericel discovered her love of coding in the fifth grade. “I was immediately transfixed,” she says. Now, she wants to use her newfound skills to help others. “Last year I had the opportunity to work for an organization called Noviaris, which works to provide iPads to underprivileged communities,” she explains. “Since then, I have dreamed about expanding the mission beyond hardware and preparing youth from all backgrounds for technology-based careers.”

Mericel’s mission sounds just like Karlie’s, and her vision for Kode With Klossy. “Just like art and fashion, code is about creativity,” Karlie has said. “Women who have these skills have the power to shape our future…Now, more than ever, women need to have a seat at the table in shaping the technologies that are shaping our world.”

And Mericel is well-equipped to do so. Her thoughtful, minimalistic-yet- impactful website caught our judges’ eyes thanks to its attention to detail, elegant interactivity, and use of the full suite of imagery provided for the project. “When I sat down to construct the website, I did some online shopping as my industry research,” Mericel explains. Her research and preparation were evident in the sleek surprises coded into her design, like the splashes of Pure Color Envy shades that pop up when a user hovers over the site’s navigation menu. “I wanted my website to convey the classic elegance and boldness of Estée Lauder that has been known for generations, while also presenting the Lips to Envy collection in a way that’s appealing to all generations.”

So, what’s next? Mericel plans to continue pursuing her study of computer science, hopefully parlaying it into a career in beauty. “I endeavor to one day be the Estée Lauder product manager speaking to the Kode with Klossy cohort in the year 2050. I would love if I could point to my Zen Garden creation as the first step in my journey that brought my dreams to reality.” We have the feeling this landing page is just the beginning of a brightly-colored future.