Pierre Dinand II

Which of your bottles was the hardest to design?
Fendi… Karl Lagerfeld was artistic director on the project. A very talented man, but very demanding too. It took me two years!

The plexiglass models, the galvanized plastic, the surlyn, Madame Rochas’s screw top… Innovation seems to hold a significant place in your creations. What drove you?
Curiosity: I’ve always wanted to understand how things worked. But when I think back about Obsession, it strikes me that we wouldn’t be able to take risks like that any more! Everything has to be tested to death. That was a more pioneering time, when it was much easier to take industrial chances… in any case, it’s harder nowadays… You can still take risks, you can be creative and innovative, but the industrials have to play the game too. Because the bigger risk you take, the bigger the success can be… but the bigger the flop, too.
It’s the same thing with fragrances, with the new law about allergens. If they keep that up, there won’t be a single perfume currently on the market that could still be made.

Looking back over your career, what is your best memory?
All those success stories, like Obsession, Rive Gauche, Eau Sauvage and Eternity are fabulous memories of course – so many encounters with great artists. Working directly with Calvin Klein, Christian Dior, Estée Lauder, Yves Saint Laurent, Paco Rabanne and Pierre Balmain is its own reward.
At a certain point, people in the industry started asking me if I were the son of Monsieur Dinand, because they felt like they’d always known the name Pierre Dinand! My name and image didn’t belong entirely to myself any more, it had gotten out of control.

So did that change your life?
No. I still go wind-surfing!

You have always been your own boss, although surely you must have been offered plenty of good positions, no?
Right from my first job, at Rochas, I was my own boss… In fact, back then, I was also designing liquor bottles for Rémy Martin… Well one day, Max Cointreau (then head of Rémy Martin) and Albert Gosset (the head of Rochas) met at some fancy party, and they congratulated each other for their recent bottle designs. Well, each of them told the other that the bottles were the work of a young designer called Pierre Dinand. They thought it was an odd coincidence, but couldn’t believe it was the same person… yet they were both by me! They next day, both men called me in at the same time. I showed up a bit early at Cointreau, a bit late for Gosset… In the end, I had to choose between liquor and perfume, but I have always been my own boss… The comfort of a staff position would have come at the price of not having been able to work with all those prestigious clients…
Later on, I was twice invited by major names to become their in-house designer… with stock options to sweeten the deal… I turned them both down in the name of my freedom … When those houses were sold, I was stunned when I realized the profit I could have made… C’est la vie!
Although you have designed half the fragrance bottles on the planet are there any bottles in the other half that you wish you had designed?
Of course! Chanel No. 5 for its perfect simplicity… but that was back in 1920, so I have no regrets, I hadn’t been born yet! L’Air du Temps: now there’s a bottle that’s both a classic, and extremely innovative for its time.
More recently, there’s FlowerbyKenzo, that’s about it these past few years…
Have you ever been tempted to design furniture, to diversify your creative activities?
I haven’t got the time! As it is, we’re always working on about 25 projects at once, for all the most prestigious brands… here, take a look at a weekly briefing report from 1986. (It’s 4 pages longs and does indeed discuss dozens of simultaneous projects for all the biggest names in fragrance…)
What do you think about today’s fragrance market?
I think that creativity has yielded to copycatting inspired by consumer focus groups. When a fragrance works, everybody rushes to jump on the bandwagon. Everything’s the same, there are too many product launches; only one in a hundred will attract any attention or still be there a few years down the road. It’s a shame…

Are you fascinated by the work of any other artists?
Frank Gehry, he’s 81... it gives me hope for the future! (N.B. Pierre Dinand is 78)

Do you have a motto?
Nothing in particular, no… But I’m often asked what I would tell a young person who’s just getting started… To get to where I am now, I worked harder than anybody else! No, seriously, you have to be curious, open-minded and know how to listen…

Thank you, Pierre