By the mid-1960s, traditional Japanese concepts of beauty provided Shiseido designers with an alternative to Western ideals. Looking back at their own heritage, they found inspiration in the history of Japanese art and culture for their packaging and advertising designs. In 1964 Shiseido launched a Zen collection of perfumes whose packaging—based lacquerware—featured intricate patterns of gold leaves silhouetted against velvety black backgrounds. Another perfume, Suzuro, recalled suzuri, the ink stones used in calligraphy. Shiseido makeup lines collections such as Inoui, with its sleek minimalism, drew on Zen aesthetics. One model in particular, Sayoko Yamaguchi—the first to win international acclaim—embodied time-honored Japanese beauty tenets with her almond-shaped eyes, white complexion, and pitch-black hair.

In the 1980s, Shiseido began to develop products for young consumers, focusing on an aesthetic known as kawaii, which can be translated loosely as "cute," and which, along with Japanese kitsch, has always coexisted with a more elegant, reductivist sensibility. Shiseido also engaged the French photographer and designer Serge Lutens to help devise a new global corporate image. Between 1981 and 1991 Lutens continued the Shiseido tradition of merging fine and commercial arts. By ’90s, Shiseido’s products and advertising responded to an increasingly diverse audience: many current Shiseido lines are unisex and multicultural. The relaunch of the Zen line for the new millennium signals a new effort to reassert Japanese aesthetics and values, and addresses contemporary longings for non-material or meditative inner peace.