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Givenchy features their female staff

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 12:52:58 +0100

Givenchy’s new fragrance for spring 2010, eaudemoiselle, reconnects with the aristo-chic spirit that is so dear to couturier Hubert de Givenchy. In the perfume’s ad, professional model Magdalena Frackowiak appears clad in a long black cape. The fragrance’s packaging also features women’s faces, but you won’t find Magdalena’s among them. No, Givenchy had a surprising idea: organize an in-house casting call among the female employees to choose young Givenchy women to feature on the product. The brand’s CEO, Alain Lorenzo, came up with the idea, and the casting call was organized by the ad agency that works with Givenchy regularly. Why choose staff members rather than professional models? Essentially for legal and logistical reasons having to do with image rights. They would have had to change the packaging every two or three years, and organizing returns for unsold bottles would have been complicated, the house admits. The young women chosen, one blond and one brunette, come from the press office for the one, and marketing for the other. They’ve both signed a contract and will be paid like ‘normal’ models, the brand explains. The idea of the faces, which will appear in golden frames, is unusual: packaging is usually fairly neutral, or at most, adorned with drawings of flowers, but never faces, Givenchy points out. What’s more, the faces on this item are real ‘Demoiselles Givenchy,’ which is even more unusual. While the house isn’t hyping this point, in order to focus on the fragrance itself, they do acknowledge that the idea created a real esprit de corps amongst the staff. Who knows, the idea might well inspire other brands in the future.
- Nicolas Olczyk

Is hand-made the latest status symbol?

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 12:12:59 +0100

On a fragrance market with more and more new product launches, the word ‘rare’ still sometimes gets its fullest meaning. Rareness is often conditioned by high prices or by extremely limited editions. But there is another option: hand-made. When you open the packaging protecting a bottle from niche brand Amouage, you find a little note: “Thank you for your purchase. I wrapped this product for you personally … “ and the person’s signature at the bottom of the note. Such attention to detail is a pleasant surprise for customers, who are used to a certain standard, based on automated production methods rather than personalization. But some procedures have resisted automation, and can not be reproduced by machine, or not to the same standards, anyway. That is the case for baudruchage, which is still done by classic houses like Chanel and Guerlain. The manual-only technique calls for applying string or sealing wax to seal fragrance bottles. At luxury waxer Rigaud’s, one person is specialized in tying the house’s signature knots, which adorn all of their products. Handmade can also mean hand-painted or -gilded bottles. Annick Goutal, for instance, proposes hand-painted limited editions of her fragrances every year. But hand-made can even refer to the fragrances themselves. Swiss brand Tauer Perfumes launched ‘Memorables’, a collection of hand-made fragrances, the first of which is called ‘Une rose chyprée’. ‘Each of these fragrances is like a luxury chocolate,’ confides the designer, the selected ingredients are rare, and the presentation is done entirely by hand, in Switzerland. For fans of hand-made items, the Internet even provides a shopping site dedicated to “all things hand-made”: Etsy (etsy.com). “Bath & Beauty” items have their own, good-sized section.
- Nicolas Olczyk

Rivers inspire fragrance designers

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 12:12:26 +0100

Emblematic of the ‘destinations’ theme that bas been in vogue in perfumery for the past few years, Hermès’ Un Jardin sur le Nil has been a huge success. This gently refreshing unisex scent is the second fragrance in the house’s “Jardin” (garden) collection. It’s also the first in a new kind of fragrance with a river theme. Early 2010, two new unisex scents invite us to drift down the world’s waterways. For Annick Goutal, Ninfeo Mio is an invitation to discover a secret Italian garden, Ninfa, with the Ninfeo River running through it. The composition is citrusy and woody, with sweet and fruity green inflections. On the banks of another Italian river: Ciane flows through Sicily, near Syracuse. The atmosphere is recreated by another new unisex scent, from Parfumerie Générale this time. Papyrus de Ciane is a green-woody eau with a lush, mossy trail. As our planet has a nearly infinite number of lovely rivers with exotic names, fragrance designers have found an endless vein to mine.
- Nicolas Olczyk

An hour, a fragrance…

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 17:10:22 +0100

With the launch of their Les Heures de Parfum collection, Cartier proposes an unusual concept in which fragrances are categorized, not as woody, floral or ambry, but by time of day. Mysterious, wild, shining… each of these “hourly” fragrances is an olfactory allegory of time, but more than that, of the different moods we feel. This isn’t the first time that time has been used as a creative theme in perfumery. In 1912, Guerlain created L’Heure Bleue, a classic powdery oriental. But there’s also L’Heure Exquise, a sweet and powdery rose from Annick Goutal. In-the-know Californian brand Laura Mercier has Heure Magique, a scent of spicy roses and woods, and top model Kate Moss has Velvet Hour, a sensual potion in a midnight-blue bottle. More atypically, Japanese brand Irie Wash’s fragrances are called 09h25, 15h10 and 20h50. Unisex and offbeat, they propose respectively energizing, floral and sweet olfactory variations on a fresh Calabrian lemon accord. Romantic, dreamy, sultry or off-beat, time seems to be an infinitely extendable olfactory theme. As far as the unisex Les Heures de Parfum collection goes, it should grow… over time.

- Nicolas Olczyk

Stones in my perfume

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 10:52:49 +0100

After perfume bottles that look like diamonds, here come real diamonds… inside perfume bottles! Jeweler Mauboussin recently attracted a lot of hype by hiding diamonds inside their fragrances for women. The trick for clients was to get the right bottle, since only one in 12 concealed a diamond. But all sorts of stones – both precious and not – have been cropping up in the world of scents lately. All of newcomer Valeur Absolue’s fragrances contain semi-precious stones, like aquamarine, pink quartz or tiger’s eye. Designer Hervé Domar tucks rhinestones – in different shapes and colors, depending on the scent – into his bottles. British jewelry designer Solange Azagury Partidge offers a fragrance containing diamond powder.

The trend has shown up in the world of make-up as well: several brands have integrated precious or semi-precious stones into their skin-care lines. Bulgari’s latest skin-care range uses a compound of 4 different stones reduced to powder: sapphire, tourmaline, malachite and citrine. Yet another brand has even based their whole image on the concept: Gemology proposes ruby, jade and diamond creams and lotions…. Diamond powder is also used in make-up: Nivea, for instance, includes it in their lipstick. A (precious) trend to watch out for...

- Nicolas Olczyk

Galbanum makes a comeback

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 10:17:20 +0100

A plant with lively and slightly resinous green notes, galbanum is an essence that perfumers learn to use sparingly. Smelled pure, the ingredient shrieks green in a way that is almost stunningly frank, to say the least. Yet several recent creations have put galbanum back in the spotlight. In the fresh eau A Scent by Issey Miyake, it’s paired with hyacinth, verbena and jasmine. Papyrus de Ciane, the new fragrance from Parfumerie Générale, pairs galbanum, powerful in the top notes, with chypre and balsamy notes of moss. You’ll find galbanum in Tom Ford’s woody-chypre unisex scent Italian Cypress, too, as well as in the designer’s Arabian Wood. And Prada’s men’s scent Infusion d’Homme uses a touch of galbanum in amongst its fresh, powdery notes.

Galbanum fans can also try (or go back to) classic scents like Sisley’s very green, unisex Eau de Campagne (1976), or, for men, Lacoste’s Original (1984). But the most famous galbanum fragrance of them all is undoubtedly Balmain’s Vent Vert (1947), in which perfumer Germaine Cellier decided to go for a veritable overdose of galbanum. Green effect guaranteed!

- Nicolas Olczyk

The Trends column will be back on February 8, 2010

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 17:30:54 +0100

The Trends column will be back on February 8, 2010

Ultra-luxury comes home for the holidays

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 17:29:06 +0100

In the worlds of both luxury and haute cuisine, the year-end holiday season is economically essential: if there’s one time a year when people are willing to splurge, this is it. So this year, despite the crisis, fragrance brands have also come up with some exceptional extravaganzas. For men and women looking for something more unusual than the traditional gift sets (fragrance plus free bath or body product), there are in fact other, more prestigious items available for the holidays. Nina Ricci, for instance, is presenting L’Air du Temps extract in a gold-embossed crystal bottle equipped with a spray bulb (Cristal d’Or, 400 euros). Mugler has always made room for the ultra-luxurious: for 2,000 Euros ($3,000) the Palace collection proposes the Superstar Deluxe bottle of Angel (with a pear-shaped ‘diamond’ crystal pendant) or of Alien, set with 322 gilded Swarovski crystals. For the woman who has everything, and for the modest sum of 30,000 Euros, ($45,000) Guerlain lets you custom-order some truly divine decadence… A gilded bottle of Idylle is suspended within a bubble of Baccarat crystal. You can choose to keep it as a work of art, or ask Guerlain to break the shell in order to be able to wear the perfume. Luxurious dilemma! Another olfactory folly, but for men this time: a 24-lb. leather case, covered with galuchat (shark or sea skate leather). Made-to-order only, the case, designed by Fred Pinel, contains an 18-carat gold bottle of Paco Rabanne’s 1 Million de Paco Rabanne adorned with a diamond. You will have to lay out 40 thousand euros, though. But then true luxury is priceless…

- Nicolas Olczyk

Switzerland, another land of perfume

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:41:42 +0100

Internationally, when you say ‘perfume’, people often think ‘France.’ There’s the Provençal town of Grasse, for instance, which still has some of its traditional flower fields and olfactory factories. And then there’s Paris, a city that appears on innumerable bottles and one that Yves Saint Laurent even turned into a perfume, Paris, which has been refreshed this fall with a flanker called Parisienne. But of course, France isn’t the only country that makes fragrance. Prestigious perfumes have been designed in the USA, Italy and… Switzerland, too! Indeed, over the past two or three years, we have noticed a recrudescence in independent fragrance designers from Switzerland. For the moment reserved for those in the know, they have nevertheless been hyped on several blogs. Based in Zurich, Andy Tauer designs for his own brand, Tauer Perfumes (tauerperfumes.com). Also in Zurich, Vero Kern comes up with creations for her Vero Profumo brand (veroprofumo.com). In Döttingen, in northern Switzerland, René Schifferle creates perfumes for his LesNez (TheNoses) brand (lesnez.com) in collaboration with fragrance designers Isabelle Doyen and Sandrine Videault. But Switerland’s relationship with fragrance isn’t all new. Two major perfume-design houses, Firmenich and Givaudan, are in fact Swiss, and both are headquartered near Geneva. Another fragrance group with a design lab in Geneva: Procter & Gamble Prestige, which designs best-sellers for brands like Lacoste and Hugo Boss there. Switzerland is indeed a major player in the field of fragrance.

- Nicolas Olczyk

Luxury brands are addicted to macarons

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:25:53 +0100

Couture and fragrance houses can’t resist the creativity of Parisian pastry makers. And particularly one of their best-selling items: macarons (small filled meringues). Shoe-designer Christian Louboutin recently brought out a signature collection of macarons with the celebrated pastry-shop Ladurée… And Ladurée has just announced a new limited-edition line in conjunction with the luxury brand Marni. This fall, pastry chef Pierre Hermé, who worked with Guerlain for the launch of the perfume Spiritueuse Double Vanille in 2007 (transcribing the vanilla-rum oriental scent into a taste experience), came up with a creation to accompany Helena Rubinstein’s make-up collection. A caramel-and-lavender macaron in golden and purple hues – like the house’s make-up line. These collaborations are often produced in ultra-limited series and are tasted only by the happy few, yet they do have the advantage of creating a buzz in a creative and unusual way. They inspire gourmet cravings in consumers, while allowing luxury brands to communicate about values and worlds that their own products might not necessarily provide access to.

- Nicolas Olczyk