Showing posts with label sarah jessica parker. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sarah jessica parker. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 1, 2017

Sarah Jessica Parker Lovely: fragrance review

Few fragrances boast their very definition in their name, unless they're programmatic, but so few celebrity scents are anyway. Lovely is really lovely and it earns brownie points for being launched by a celebrity that actually gives a darn about fragrance instead of seeing it as a personal brand: the perfume-obsessed Sarah Jessica Parker.

via

Inspired by her love for mixing high-school staple Bonne Belle Skin Musk and an Egyptian-style musk oil bought from street vendors (rumor has it that it's the same that the late Carolyn Bessete Kennedy wore) with a "smoky" incense-patchouli-woods from Japanese avant-garde brand Comme des Garcons (Avignon actually), Jessica Parker didn't really get her way in terms of Lovely imposing a challenging concept in actual market terms. That's if we are to go by Chandler Burr's account, who chronicled the story of the creation in the book "The Perfect Scent".

Yet she managed to get the perfect "go anywhere" woody floral musk scent, with a fine trail of lavender (and a hint of rose?) mid-evolution, that can't help but put that expression on your face when both lips and crow's feet lines smile into "ah, loooovely!"

Monday, December 21, 2009

Body Odour Perfume? A Celebrity Challenges Us

Anyone who has read The New York Times articles by Chandler Burr knows that Sarah Jessica Parker is a true fragrance aficionado. Following the author's fascinating book The Perfect Scent confirmed it:

Sarah Jessica likes her own mixture of her beloved Bonne Belle Skin Musk, Comme des Garcons Avignon and Abdul Kareem's musk oil* The effect is positively naughty, as she jokingly intimated, yet for her first foray into fragrance, Coty Inc. decided to start with something decisively tamer and pretty (Lovely), while her second fragrance, Covet, was more unusual, yet still nowhere near what Sarah Jessica truly envisioned, apparently! For her the essential component in a sexy smell is a little...body odour! And that's what the next Sarah Jessica Parker celebrity fragrance under the aegis of trusty partner Coty is going to be after!
Before you frown your pretty little face into a disgusted grimace, let me remind you that there is a primal instinct associated with a little body odour, that fresh sweat can actually smell rather good and that animalics are very popular on these pages, so I am assuming you have cottoned up to the fact that we're interested, by now.
So what does Sarah Jessica Parker's upcoming new fragrance entail? And did she take a page off Matthew McConaughey who likes his body odour and doesn't wear deodorant?

The Sex & The City star told WENN: "I'm working on a new genderless fragrance that's not out yet. I can't even tell you what it's called."It has taken me three years to decide on the scent because I really like B.O. and I think it's sexy. I wanted to figure out a way to make it palatable to everybody."I was like, 'How do you get B.O. in a bottle and make an atomiser of it?' Then it was all about trying to capture the sense of naughtiness in a bottle that it would be good for a man and a woman." [source] In the interim "Parker has been trying out the new scent on journalists and bloggers during her press tour for new movie`Did You Hear About the Morgans?`, in which she stars with British heartthrob Hugh Grant".[source]
Talk about stinky word of mouth! We will see, I guess, although I wouldn't exactly assume the glands of human beings would be squeezed out of their appecrine emitions or she'd target bromhidrosis exactly...That wouldn't be "palatable to everybody". But the desire to be clean yet smell a little skanky, a little 'rolling out of bed' ~that bed not exactly equipped with chastity belts~ seems like a sexy idea!

*[The latter wasn't revealed via Burr at all; in fact this is journalistic conjecture on our part, since she has been great friends with Narciso Rodriguez and a fan of his perfume ~Lovely was fashioned after Narciso, after all~ and Rodriguez had been inspired for his first fragrance by a musk oil that his muse Caroline Bessette was buying for the three of them in New York City, which was revealed to be Abdul Kareem's posthumously.]

Black & white photograph of Sarah Jessica Parker in a bikini via msanto/photobucket.

Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Burr-y the Hatchet: part 2

We continue our interview with writer and perfume critic of The New York Times, Chandler Burr. For part 1, click here.

PART 2

PLEASE NOTE: unauthorised copying of excerpts of the book constitutes copyright infringement. Mr.Burr personally gave us express permission to reprint those for this venue only.



PS: Chandler, for your new book “The Perfect Scent” you followed two different paths: the path of the celebrity scent (for Sarah Jessica Parker for Coty) and the path of the perfumer’s vision for a high-end brand (Jean Claude Ellena for Hermès).
Which one was more fun and which was more challenging, journalistically speaking?


CB: They were as completely different experiences as they could be and still be, in both cases, spending a year inside a perfume making process. Ellena’s story I tell from the perfumer’s perspective, Sarah Jessica’s from that of the creative director, so there you have a fundamental difference. The only time I spent with Laurent and Clément, her perfumers, was when they were with her. I’m going to let the book speak on this one; decide for yourself which you think was more interesting. I’ve already heard vastly different opinions.



PS: How viable are celebrity scents in your own opinion. Most are bought by fans who want to emulate their idol and are consquently frowned upon by perfume lovers who refuse sometimes to even try them out! However in my personal opinion there is no blanket description: some are good (like Lovely), some are horrible. Why is this, in your opinion and experience getting to know the process of creating one?

CB: I agree completely. Hilary Duff is a very good perfume. So is Midnight Fantasy. The Kimora Lee Simmons Goddess is beyond-belief bad. I do think celebrity perfumes are still viable and will remain so because they’re simply such a good, effective way for famous people to monetize their pure celebrity. There simply is no better mechanism by which to do this.


PS: Jean Claude Ellena is the darling of the internet-reading perfumephile. I am a fan of his perfumes as well. However, theres is the impression that what with his numerous interviews and constant media exposure and his habit of showing his “tricks” of expertise to awe-stricken journalists that he has become a bit of the latest conjurer: to be admired for what he hides in his sleeves rather than what he genuinely reveals. Did you find that this is true, while following his work for “The Perfect Scent”?

CB: Um…no, absolutely not, but I suppose I hesitate only in that I do realize why people can have that impression of him. My year with him—and this is a categoric statement—showed me how extremely talented he is. He is not super-human. No one is. He has limits. He has an immense ego as well, which in my view is his only serious character flaw (I generally find him a delightful guy). I think Terre d'Hermès is excellent as masculines go but overpraised. I think Jean-Claude’s Achilles heel is persistence on skin. And he has said to me quite openly several times that every perfumer owns strengths, and he plays to them.

But to give you a taste of what I say in "The Perfect Scent" about this question:


"The announcement of Ellena’s appointment was made by Hermès on May 5, 2004, to go into effect June 7. Everyone in Paris had a comment (New York noted it and went back to its business lunches), though since it was Paris all the comments were off the record and many were tinged, overtly or not, with venom. “It’s excellent to take Jean-Claude,” said one young perfumer, who cleared his throat, squinted at the sky, and added primly, “I’m almost jealous.”They were openly admiring (“They couldn’t do better than Jean-Claude,” the perfumer Calice Becker said, “an excellent perfumer passionate about his métier and uncompromising on materials”). They were acid (“How nice that Jean-Claude will get to do even more of his favorite thing: talking to reporters”). They were envious (“Can you imagine the freedom?”). They were thoughtful, analytical(“Jean-Louis was very smart about this, and you watch, they’re going to start increasing market share”)….The industry discussed his putative salary in the way the French always discuss salaries: as if the KGB were listening….
Ellena? He was a star, like Jacques Cavallier (the lovely Chic, the monster hit L’Eau d’Issey, the monster miss but utterly brilliant Le Feu d’Issey). Or Kurkdjian (Armani Mania, Le Male). Or Becker (J’adore, Beyond Paradise). And he had a star’s usual partisans and critics and detractors. All this was intensified with Ellena because he was a darling of the media, with whom he was famous for having a discours de parfum. Reporters could talk to him. He could talk back. To the degree to which this was rare, in part it was the perfumers, who were not groomed for microphones, and in part the paranoid, control-freak designers, whose dogma was maintaining the official fiction that they created their own scents. They liked perfumers to be kept in cages in dark rooms. This was why some perfumers liked the fact that Ellena spoke.
Naturally there was also bitter commentary—vindictive jealousy is, like beurre blanc, a French speciality—usually punctuated, after a careful glance over the shoulder, with the stab of a hot cigarette. “I don’t think he’s the best perfumer in the world,” said a competitor, “but he’s one who has a thinking about perfumery. He presents himself as the heir of Edmond Roudnitska.”…There was derision. “I don’t have a big appreciation for him actually,” the creator of several legendary perfumes sniffed. “His behavior is not greatly appreciated by many people.” His behavior? “Ellena has a good reputation with important people but not with people in the perfume industry. He’s a version of a celebrity chef, a media whore, which everyone tries to become today because the world is now based on the media whereas autrefois the perfumer simply focused on his work and le plan creatif.” “I won’t discuss Ellena,” one dowagerof the French industry and creator of several classic perfumes sniffed. “He’s a showman.” But others took a more philosophical approach. “Grasse is a complicated tribe,” said a middle-aged perfumer. “There’s a real mafia grassoise…. Grasse is a tiny little town, and the kids leave for Paris to seek their fortunes. Jean-Claude is grassois, and so they all know him, and when you understand that, you understand everything.
Jean-Claude knows how to talk about perfume, and the press is desperate for that, and I’m sorry, but if other perfumers are jealous it’s because very few perfumers can talk about perfume. ‘I put jasmine in rose.’Well, OK, so what the fuck does that mean. Nothing! And someone comes and explains it, and suddenly he’s a media whore? Please.”


PS: Ellena also frequently talks about not having to conform to marketing briefs and target groups’ opinion. Does he really have free reign at Hermès? I have read in his self-authored books that he deems the 2-3% share he garners satisfactory. In a market in which perfume generates lots of revenue for big luxury houses as the most accessible of their products to the middle-class is that doable?

CB: I will simply say on this question that from everything I’ve seen, Ellena truly has a huge amount—not by any means complete, but a huge amount—of creative control at Hermès. He creates according to concepts sometimes (Un Jardin sur le Nil, for example), but never briefs in the sense of conceptual blueprints created by other people that he must then build with molecules. That work, for him, is finished.


PS: One criticism that has been directed at Jean Claude Ellena is that he has completely altered the scent profile of the Hermès fragrance stable: his spartan style that exudes a vibe of sparsity, although undeniably chic contradicts the image of Hermès as smelling “rich”. Contrasting previous fragrances of the house, like Rouge or 24 Faubourg -which are easily imagined on a lady wearing furs (parfums fourrure) - with his own creations like Un Jardin sur le Nil or Terre d’Hermès one notices a stark difference. The newer ones, even the Hermessences don’t smell as pampered and luxe. I realise that this is his conviction of how perfumery should be done (not catering to a bourgeois sensibility), but did he shed any other insights into this?


CB: I’m actually going to leave this one for the book as well, not only to make you read the book but, frankly, because he never gave me a specific answer to this, but I think you’ll find that my year with him, taken as a whole, absolutely provides, in the end, an answer. I know the criticisms of course; part of my response is Ambre Narguilé, simply enough, which to my mind (and Jean-Claude’s) is the way rich luxury must evolve in the 21st century, an absolutely stunning piece of perfumery on every level. But I think Kelly Calèche is a masterpiece because it is 100% Ellena’s contemporary, forward-edge, intellectual presentation, 100% Hermès, and 100% luxury. Not Louis Vuitton purse luxury—beautiful, refined, purified luxury.


PS: I have been saying this last bit ever since it launched! LOL
On that note of luxury: I was reading a very intriguing article in Fortune lately, which focused on the new McLuxury scenario. Namely that upscale houses and designers are experiencing a democratization of their product both in terms of aimed audience and in their brand becoming more accessible. We have the examples of Stella Mc Cartney and Karl Lagerfeld designing for H&M for example or the case study of Coach who aimed at a lower price point from the start.


CB: Yes, Dana Thomas just wrote an entire book about this, "Deluxe".


PS: Right! In perfume, there are two distinct paths: that of masstige (perfumes circulating on the mainstream circuit posing as something more upscale than they are) and that of high-browed exclusivity trying to reposition a brand into higher planes in an effort to ante up the cachet which will perversely help boost sales of their lower end products! (Case of Les Exclusifs at Chanel, Hermessences, Armani Privé, Dior Collection etc.) What’s your take on this issue?


CB: I’m not sure if I’m more or less cynical than Dana. It is just so obvious to me that “luxury goods” are 90% image and 10% substance. Jacques Polge’s Chanel No 18 is an astonishing perfume, but you’re paying a huge premium for the word “Chanel”—compare it to Juicy Couture, which is a similar approach by Harry Frémont. Chanel No 18 and Juicy Couture have an identical aesthetic approach: both are machines built of glass and meant to be filled with light. They have different scents, but stylistically they are in the same category.

OK, so we have to pay a premium for luxury—big surprise. So I think you perfectly characterize the commercial purpose of Les Exclusifs and the others you mention. And at the same time, they just are, generally speaking, superior perfumes. Would I pay that premium? Yes, for some of them, not for others. But the fact that they have a commercial purpose as well as an aesthetic purpose—a dirty and a pure both—bothers me not in the slightest. This is the way the game is played. Art and commerce have never been separate. And when they have, the art has often been crap. I suppose the trick is simply in knowing what’s going on in front of you—then taking what you like.


PS: Thank you Chandler for what has been a trully fascinating perspective.


CB: And thank you for allowing me to answer these questions.



Pics of Lovely and Hermes ads from okadi. Pic of Jean Claude Ellena courtesy of the LA Times.

Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Burr-y the Hatchet: Chandler Burr Interview


Perfume Shrine always aims to bring our readers the highlights of fragrance appreciation with objectivity and a level-headed analytical approach.
So, in the pursuit of those goals, we present you today with an interview with one of the controversial players in fragrance writing: the journalist and writer Chandler Burr.

Mr.Burr perused our site, confessed being impressed with the quality (we humbly blushed) and honoured us with an in-depth interview on certain sensitive points that were rather tough, per his estimate: about his current position as perfume critic in The New York Times, a position for which he has been criticized a lot by internet readering perfumephiles; his acquintance with Luca Turin for "The Emperor of Scent"; his stance on the matters of perfume composition; his newest book "The Perfect Scent" which follows the creation of two fragrances from scratch: one for a celebrity, Sarah Jessica Parker, and the other by esteemed perfumer Jean Claude Ellena for Hermès; and his views on the new luxe tendencies in the industry.
Perfume Shrine appreciates the thought and effort that went into answering those questions; we found him agreeable and we sincerely thank him.

Let's follow him.....

PLEASE NOTE: unauthorised copying of excerpts of the book constitutes copyright infringement. Mr.Burr personally gave us express permission to reprint those for this venue only.

PART 1

PS: Chandler, you had been a journalist for a long time and had written a book on sexuality. How did you decide after writing “The Emperor of Scent” to devote more of your time into writing about perfume? Was it a new interest, a new field for journalistic exploration that culminated in your New York Times appointment or something that turned into a genuine and profound love for fragrance?



CB: I actually had no intention of writing on perfume again. In fact, I didn’t really consider “The Emperor of Scent” a book related to perfume as a subject per se, although I of course now realize that was obtuse on my part. I’d loved writing about perfume in the context of “Emperor,” discovering scent criticism via Luca Turin’s writing, hearing his astonishing stories about perfume and his opinions—learning the basics of what “good” and “bad” meant in this brand new (to me) artistic field.



“The Perfect Scent” and my position as The New York Times perfume critic were entirely a surprise and entirely the result of an idea pitched to me by my editor at The New Yorker magazine. He took me to lunch, and I proposed ten—I remember the number; I’d prepared a list—detailed pieces that interested me, basically economics stories in Asia. That’s my field, at least officially; I studied international relations in Paris, Chinese history in Beijing, and I started as a stringer at the Christian Science Monitor's Southeast Asia bureau in Manila. My Masters is Japanese political economy. But he said to me, well, I read “Emperor,“ and what really interested me are these people, these perfumers, who make perfume. He’d had no idea the profession existed. He proposed that I do a behind-the-scenes account of the creation of a perfume. I absolutely didn’t want to do it. I didn’t tell him that, of course. Well, I think I cringed a little. The reason is that I really, really wanted to start reporting from Asia and I really, really didn’t want to have anything to do with fashion. It’s a world I dislike, one I feel quite uncomfortable in. Or felt. I’m a bit more used to it, but the point is, it’s just not my thing—I knew how to write about the automotive industry in Japan, but I had no idea how to write about perfume and fashion, I’d never done it before, “Emperor” sure as hell wasn’t about that—and because of that discomfort I actually wound up turning in a first draft to The New Yorker that they hated, which I didn’t know until after the piece was published. We edited it down, found the narrative, and I discovered that I loved writing about perfume as perfume. Writing “Emperor” I smelled almost nothing. Writing the New Yorker piece and then “The Perfect Scent” I smelled raw materials and perfumes constantly, every day, spent weeks and weeks in laboratories, visited raw materials plants, fields that grew orange blossoms and roses and jasmine. Amazing.


When the New Yorker piece came out, I was at a party at Hermès on Madison Avenue, and Francesca Leoni introduced me to Stefano Tonchi, the head of T Style, the New York Times style magazine. He said, “Come see me Friday at 10!” I showed up at The Times—I hadn’t confirmed, I just showed up at 10—and he was surprised to see me—“But you didn’t confirm!” (Sorry)—but we sat down, and he said, “We want you to write for us! What would you like to do?” I said, “I’d like to be your perfume critic.” He stared at me for a moment and then said, “I love it! We’ll do it!”



PS: Most people involved in perfume know you from “The Emperor of Scent” and its unraveling of the Luca Turin saga. How was it meeting him and knowing him as a man? There are some hints in the book, but fans are interested in more.

CB: I had never spent time with an actual genius before, and it is a profoundly strange sensation. Here is a mind that is simply running at such a high processor speed, with such a large memory and a vastness of information available to it, and I just reveled in it. What’s interesting to me is the range of reaction to Luca as I presented him in “Emperor.” Some people hated the character as they interpreted him in my book, found him arrogant, egotistical—which in my opinion he is not at all; having opinions is not the same thing as being egotistical. Others loved him. “He’s touchy, he’s fun, he’s grouchy, he’s brilliant, he’s self-destructive”—I’ve heard everything from readers of the book.

It seems obvious to me that we exist, as people, in the number of parallel universes that there are people who know us; if five people know you, you are five different people. Luca is certainly touchy, fun—to me, wildly fun, I’ve never been able to have the conversations with people that I have with him—self-destructive, brilliant, entertaining, enlightening. He is also absolutely imperfect; being a genius doesn’t remove flaws, in fact it amplifies them. He can be solipsistic—the breakdown of intelligence—petulant, violent. I’ve been furious at things he’s said and done and vice versa. He’s stopped speaking to me numerous times. In the periods in which we’re on good terms I never, ever have better political conversations, more interesting talks, or a better time with anyone. He is eminently practical (there is no higher word of praise in my vocabulary, just so you know), concise, and, as Luca loves to say, bullshit-free. He can be more reactive and juvenile, more clear minded and perceptive—astonishingly, effortlessly so—than anyone I’ve ever met. He is extra ordinary {sic}. And there it is.


PS: You have been the perfume critic of the New York Times for quite some time now. There has been some criticism about your columns from people who are interested in perfume, especially on internet fora. This is a good thing, because it means that so many read you and pay attention, by the way! The main complaint however has been that you became a perfume critic by association: because you had met someone who had been a perfume critic himself. Other complaints focus on your prose or your attention to the chemical structure of things which they might deem as unromantic. How would you reply to them, if at all?


CB: OK, so let’s take them one by one. Obviously I became a perfume critic by association: I met Luca, I learned from him that perfume criticism existed, I wrote about him doing it, then I started doing it. And? How do they think people become anything? David Geffen started working in the William Morris mailroom. Amy Pascal started as some producer’s assistant; now she’s Chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment Motion Picture Group. In fact, throughout history a vast number of the men and women who’ve made it to the top of their professions started on the lowliest levels in places they got to by pure chance—life is like that—and rose. Joseph Volpe began as a carpenter's apprentice at New York's Metropolitan Opera and four decades later became its general manager. And on and on and on. This is an idiotic observation to make about me on its face.


But if they are actually arguing, elliptically, that my criticism is qualitatively inferior, that’s a completely different and unrelated argument. And they can make that argument. But they should make that argument directly. The other is an observation, not an argument, and it is prima facia moronic. So is my criticism qualitatively inferior? I hope not. I certainly spend an immense amount of time and effort trying to insure it isn’t.


Complaints about my prose and my attention to the chemical structure of things: These are of course perfectly legitimate points. My response is, first, that nobody bats a thousand, and I sure as hell am no exception. I make mistakes (in retrospect, obviously; one only has retrospect to make that call) all the time in choice of adjectives and so on. If you write for a year, you have a year’s worth of writing to find things that you regret. If you write for 30 years, you’ve got 30 years’ worth. Somebody once asked Frank Bruni how often he read what was on the blogs about him, and he said, emphatically, “Never!” My answer is: “Almost never.” First, I’m not a board guy, either technically (I lose my way on them) or temperamentally. Second, the ratio of serious, intelligent criticism of my own writing, both positive and negative, that I’ve seen is relatively small. When it’s there, I love it. A friend sent me to look at something on Perfume of Life recently, and I found an entire thread in which people had not only posed several smart criticisms of me but asked several pertinent questions, and I wound up making the first board entry I think I’ve ever made. I really enjoyed it. I have no time or interest in comments like “Burr is such an asshole,” “What a jerk,” “Yeah, anyone else who can’t stand him?” There is simply zero content here. When the comments are intelligent and thoughtful, then I’m interested.



For example, there’s the criticism of my writing about the molecules and synthetics and the opinion that that makes perfume “unromantic.” I could not possibly disagree more strongly with this point of view, but it’s an entirely legitimate point of view, so to give an answer: For me—not for others, I realize; I’m speaking from my perspective—good criticism decorticates and reverse engineers the art it is examining on a mechanical level as well as a conceptual/ aesthetic one. I used the example once of Alex Ross, the New Yorker’s classical music critic, who will, rarely but sometimes, give specifics about the keys, modalities, and technical details of the music he is criticizing. I wish he did it more. I love it. I’ve read critics who talk about the technical aspects of perspective in painting and the electronics and physics of the machines that reproduce the Ravel that we listen to. I love that. (Luca is actually an expert in this.) So I start from that perspective.

Now, to bring that specifically to perfume: In "The Perfect Scent", this is part of what I say.



"I was at breakfast in Paris at one of the stupidly expensive Alain Ducasse places with the creative director of a prominent French house. I told her about a piece I was writing about synthetics for The Times, explaining the role that synthetics had in perfume and that most perfumes are made of synthetics today. She looked at me with honest horror. She said, “Mais Chandler, tu casses le rêve!” But, Chandler, you’re destroying the dream! The dream being some information-free version of perfume where the stuff presumably flows purely outof a tiny magic spigot attached to a rosebush or something else and is bottled by fairies with LVMH employment contracts. I like this woman. She’s serious and smart, but she shares this viewpoint with the overwhelming majority of French perfume industry people (and basically the same number of their New York counterparts), and I couldn’t disagree with them more. When I repeated the comment to Frédéric Malle, he rolled his eyes and said, “They’re killing themselves with this rêve, which in my opinion is more of a cauchmare.” A nightmare.
For example: Not only are synthetics fascinating; they’re basically completely misunderstood by everyone. Including some of the pros, by the way…..Perfume is a parade of emperor’s new clothes. In the “dream” version of perfume, marketers tell the public that perfumes have “notes of caramel and blueberry,” which simply means, since there are no natural caramel or blueberry perfumery raw materials (it’s neither technically possible nor financially viable to distill them), that the perfumers have just created these scents (perfumers call them accords, not notes, which is a term for public consumption).
You can create the scent of caramel with 3-hydroxy-4,5-dimethyl-2(5H)-furanone. If you take that molecule and add a small amount of ethyl butyrate, ethyl valerate, and phenethyl acetate, you get a nice fresh garden berry that would work great in an Escada launch. God forbid the public knew it.
Explaining a jet engine or the wing of a 787 doesn’t destroy the awesome beauty of flight. It doesn’t break the dream. It does the opposite. The more you understand of science, the more you marvel at the magic of reality, and creating the dream is not the same as perpetuating ignorance. It is the opposite: taking people inside, letting them see behind the scenes, showing them how it all works. To the degree to which its public discourse aligns with the truth about the construction of its perfumes, Estée Lauder is always on surer, safer, more solid ground. This is, pretty much, the fundamental political observation of the twentieth century; it is one of the more obvious economic lessons drawn from ideological, antimarket socialist economies where both economic forces and the public relations surrounding them were divorced from the reality of consumer instincts. Lauder’s old public relations policy, in which the perfumer was never to be mentioned and Mrs. Lauder was presented in some vague, inchoate way as sitting in her kitchen pouring raspberry ketone into dihydrojasmonate, is from a different era.

The paradigm is antiquated. I would suggest that it is also commercially ineffective. In fact, probably counterproductive…. Millions are fascinated by the process by which designers like Todd Oldham cut, sew, design, and agonize their fall collections into existence, but the great creative minds at Yves Saint Laurent and Jean Paul Gaultier and Dior, with the collective brilliance of a single mollusk at low tide, have intuited that with perfume? No. Here is an industry suffocating itself on the most immense pile of public relations human civilization has ever produced, a literal mountain of verbiage about “the noble materials, symbol of eternal feminine beauty, addictive notes of Cocoa Puffs, she can’t wait to taste him like a Hershey’s kiss, Cleopatra wore this, it has notes of distilled wild all-natural Martian fungus harvested by French virgins on the third moon of Pluto.” The lies pile up on other lies, they generate a poisoned river of vapid crap the marketers try to pass off as “information,” and the brands have no clue that their public relations approach is about fifty years out of date. Reading anything they put out on their perfumes is like reading a combination of Kafka, only less creative, and Pravda circa 1985. Zero interest. There is almost no recognition that the enforced lack of knowledge, this gaping void of nothingness about what their products actually are, who makes them, and what’s in the things, is creating boredom and disinterest. The perfume industry is choking itself to death on its vacuum."
~The Perfect Scent

PS: On the matter of synthetics, there has been polemics of sorts between people who defend naturals (scents made out of naturally-derived raw materials, that is) and those who prefer synthetics (scents with a preponderance of man-made aroma chemicals). Your own stance so far shows a very distinct tendency towards the latter. Would you mind explaining how and why this came about? Some might say that you are not all that familiar with all-naturals scents anyway.


CB: “Some might say that you are not all that familiar with all-naturals scents anyway.” I may of course be wrong, but I believe I’m more than familiar enough with all-natural scents. I have smelled many of them, in several different collections, over the years. Most lately a new batch, two weeks ago, in a restaurant in Soho. They are natural perfumes, which is to say they have an extremely limited palette, range, and technical performance. They are boring, and my position—which is that synthetics are absolutely just as integral to and legitimate in perfumery as natural materials; not that they are better but simply that they are equal—comes from the simple empirical observation that all raw materials are made up of chemicals. It is utterly illogical to argue that a chemical made in a plant is superior (or inferior for that matter) to the same chemical made in a factory. It’s simply illogical. It is illogical to argue that natural molecules are all good and synthetics all bad when arsenic is natural and it is a poison (as are so many other naturals). It is simply illogical. But religious people are not logical, and the all-natural people are deeply, fervently religious, and I have no more to say to them than I do to any other theocratic fundamentalists. If naturals are simply spiritually better, then my empirical position is worthless and I am wrong by definition. That’s the way religious truth works. In my view, however, religious fanaticism sucks, and it is no more logical to build a perfume today only of natural materials than it is to build a building today only out of mud, wood, and thatch.



PS: Today’s mainstream perfumery has been “cheapened” by popular agreement. Is this due in part to fragrance houses briefing the big companies that produce scents to use the cheapest ingredients, some of which are indeed aroma chemicals that mimic natural essences that have a prohibitive cost or is it merely the ugly head of unrestrained capitalism raising itself?



CB: Yes.



PS: Additionally, today’s mainstream perfumery lacks originality: everyone is copying each other and the latest blockbuster in this tsunami of perfume releases. How did it come to that? Is there a way out? Many perfumers have admittedly become jaded, like Pierre Bourdon for instance.



CB: It came to that in exactly the same way that it came to the exact same thing in Hollywood: I once heard an MBA say to me, rather wearily, “The fundamental principle in business is: reduce risk.” Olivier Cresp did Light Blue for Dolce & Gabbana, and it is just wonderful and delightful, an innovative way of doing clarity as an aesthetic. Then he did Black XS, which was the same theme, and it was slightly less interesting, though still good. Then he did Ange ou Démon, and it was what it was: a copy of a copy. But what is Olivier to do? He’s done this hugely successful thing (that also happens to be very good), they ask him, “Hey, can you make us a Light Blue too?” They mean, usually, in sales figures, but sometimes they just say it: “Copy that!” What is he to do?


YOU CAN READ THE 2nd PART CLICKING HERE




Pic of firing men from the film The wind that shakes the barley courtesy of athinorama. Pic of tryptophan structure from linkinghub.elsevier

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Be a perfume sleuth if you really Covet that bottle!

Sarah Jessica Parker impressed us with her Lovely musky foray into fragrance as we didn't really expect a celebrity perfume to be of any considerable substance. But this was a serious perfume lover we were talking about (click here for her signature perfume mix and here, for an interview with Chandler Burr)and she passed the test with flying colours.
Now comes Covet, her new scent for women and the commercial was conceived by genius director Jean-Paul Goude, responsible for the Chanel Egoiste commercial that made it to the advertising Hall of Fame.
Set to Verdi's Forza del Destino with adorably playful french by smokey-eyed mrs. Parker as she talks to monsieur le gendarme and with red-soled Louboutin shoes that peek unmistakably under her Lacroix couture dress as she kicks to the count of the orchestra on the window of the posh boutique, this is a Paris-shot commercial that imprints itself on our mind with its strange atavistic motto "I had to have it!". Because it is so much coveted, you see.



And now Coty, the brand which is issuing Covet the fragrance for Sarah Jessica Parker have devised a new sleuthing game on who masterminded the theft of the bottle on their new site, Case of the Coveted Bottle(click on the link). The site offers free samples and a contest running till October 15th for weekly prizes. There will be extra clues given on this My Space link, where you can additionally download screensavers and wallpapers for your computer.

The Grand Prize winner will receive $10.000 and a trip for two to NYC to attend Lucky Magazine’s Lucky Shops 2007, but also a Covet gift bag encompassing a jewelry box and a deluxe mini. One First Prize winner will win a flat panel TV costing $1.200 and the Covet gift bag with the items described above. Last but not least 30 second prize winners will be receiving the Covet gift bag.
Additionally, the first person to solve one of ten weekly challenges will receive a green apple iPod Shuffle along with the Covet gift bag and the challenges will renew themselves each week. Finally two lucky winners will receive an apple iPhone and a Covet gift bag for the Bonus Challenges.

Sounds impressive! In any case good luck, those games can be addictive! I could spend hours being all monsieur Hercules Poirot on that site.

On the other hand if you want to laugh a bit with the ingenious uses of the bottle, please visit this link on Smelly Blog.





Clip uploaded by Leofour4, pics from Myspace/covetsarahjessicaparker

Monday, January 8, 2007

What do the rich smell of?

It might seem a silly question. And yet, it made me ponder a bit. Intrigued by gut response received upon casual comments on various fora and the amount of controversy that issues of money and class raise even in classless United States, I have been coming to the conclusion that it is indeed a loaded question.

Upon initial shifting the general concensus seems to be that people with loaded pockets and platinum cards with credit limits on the upper echelons really go for the super exclusive, the elusive, the prestigeous and the ridiculously priced.
The recent example of the wedding gift of Clive Christian perfume to Katie Holmes by Tom Cruise, for her to wear on her wedding day is a case in point of the latter. No.1 retails for 600 euros for a 50ml/1.7oz bottle of parfum; which is actually the minimum basic salary in my country. I leave deductions to you...
The real question would be: "is it worth it?" This to me at least has to do solely with content and not presentation. Otherwise one can decant a glorious perfume in the most exquisite Baccarat bottle and enjoy it from there or just use a milk carton, it does not make that big a difference in my mind...
Purpotedly, Clive Christian No.1 for women consists of only the finest, rarest and most precious materials. However there is so much one can put into a perfume in terms of quality, after which point the whole starts to smell overwhelming and bad. I mean, upwards a certain point it does not make any difference because there is so much one can include anyway. And if one cares to look at the list of notes, one stumbles upon the insurmountable block of lily of the valley; a note that cannot be successfuly extracted from nature, a note that has to be recreated with other elements, most common of which are Citronellyl Acetate varietys A and Acetate pure, Geranyl Acetate pure, Lindenol and Terpineol Alpha JAX. As to other notes, the majority of top notes consists of things that do not skyrocket the paycheck for obtaining them: lime, Sicilian mandarin, cardamom, nutmeg, and thyme. And in its floral heart, ylang ylang is the rarity in the cost department of floral essences inventory (meaning it's relatively cheap), hence called "poor man's jasmine". The ambery woods of the base is so vague that it leaves me doubtful as to what exactly goes in the production.
So sorry, I am not convinced the price tag really reflects the content. A certain amount of snobbism is involved as well. And by the way, since the hostorian never really leaves my writing, snob derives from the notification that newly rich young men got upon entering the aristocratic colleges of the old Britain, namely Oxford and Cambridge: s.nob, denoting sine nobilitas, latin for "no nobility". Worth keeping in mind.

Joy by Jean Patou, Henri Alméras' tour de force, was touted as "the costliest perfume in the world" back in its heyday in 1930, affirming the inextricable tie between perfume, luxury and financial abandon. It was actually Elsa Maxwell, venomous gossip queen of the 30s that came up with the infamous moniker about it, the one that sealed its success besides its rich bouquet of the best jasmine and lushest rose. But those were times of recession and ruin after the Wall Street crash of 1929. It was completely irrational then as is Clive Christian now, even though it was initially devised as a less costly means of giving american women a slice of Patou's prestige now that they could no longer afford his couture. The difference though hinged on the pretenciousness that is lacking in Joy's case. Today Joy pure parfum in the 30ml/1oz bottle costs 160£ (british pounds) or 299$ at internet discounters.

Marie Antoinette is well known for her excesses and the recent biopic made by Sofia Coppola has brought her once again in the spotlight. There is a well known tale about how it was her perfume that sent her to the guillotine. On June 20,1791 Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette and their family retinue attempted to escape to eastern France, where troops loyal to the monarchy were waiting after the revolution had gained control of Paris. Their flight however was cut off at Varennes; they were recognised and arrested there and sent off to Paris under escort where they met their demise at the guillotine two years later. There is some speculation that it was the divine quality (and contrast with the rest of the people) of Marie Antoinette's perfumes and pomades that set her apart despite her disguise when they travelled, as 18th century France was a place infested with disease, full of open sewers and all that at a time when talking a bath was not to be indulged in often.
According to The Scotsman, many people have been intrigued by the scent of the decadent royal and an effort to recreate it has resulted in "Sillage de la Reine" (Queen's wake) by Elisabeth de Feydeau, "a writer who stumbled upon the lost recipe, along with the Parisian perfume-maker Francis Kurkdjian. Ms Feydeau was preparing a biography of its inventor, Jean-Louis Fargeon, the court perfumer, when she made the discovery. Mr Kurkdjian agreed that he should try to resurrect the scent using the techniques and ingredients of Fargeon's day "just to see if we could. It was very difficult because although we possess the same primary materials, the environment now is very different." But he was satisfied with the result - a mixture of jasmine, rose, iris, tuberose, lavender, musk, vanilla, ambergris, cedar, sandalwood and other essences. "The perfume is 100 per cent natural, and certainly something that the queen would have worn," he added. Ms Feydeay said smelling the Queen's Wake is "as if you're walking past a magnificent bouquet comprising flowers of every season. It has an incredible fullness." The whole composition has been likened to a precursor of Chanel #5, which begs the question why pay so much for something that can be had for much less, but I guess it's not the super-rich that wil grab those bottles but the super-collectors. You can read about the recreated perfume clicking here

And what do the rich and famous wear? One of my perfume projects is to document a list of perfumes picked up by the rich and famous, some richer than others, some more famous than others and the result can be seen clicking here It seems that among the more exclusive choices they sometimes go for things that are set by trends, or for the ubiquitous Creed fragrance which I largely attribute to Creed's magnificent PR machine, more than their consistent taste. It's interesting and fun to peruse the list however.

What do ordinary people think the rich smell of? I think most folks are judging by what is considered Bon Chic, Bon Genre when they attribute classic Rue Cambon Chanel perfumes, classic and boutique Guerlains and some Goutals to the rich and incidentally classy people. However as we all know rich and classy are not interchangeable and one should leave a leaway for the more vulgar choices. Those latter ones would have a more outspoken and loud personality to go with newly acquired money, elaborate porn-chic french manicures on long talons, bleached hair to an inch of their lives and gaudy jewels when none is required for women, really heavy all-gold watches for men. At least that's the image I freely associate with it and I would be a little coy in naming specific names.
My personal experience tells me that the richer and classier one is, the less inclined he/she is to drown all the others around in the fumes! The really rich people I have known and smelled have all worn light, subtle fragrances that were imperceptible until they leaned for a social shake of hands.
What did I smell? Aqua di Parma original cologne, Diorella and Eau du Cologne Impériale by Guerlain (latter was on a guy).
A couple of others had something on I did not recognise definitely, but still in the same vein. They were ship owners and involved in shipping: loads of money, no doubt about that.

And finally yes, when all is said and done if you're finding yourself savouring the waft from a syrupy potent composition, it's unlikely you're downwind from Princess Caroline of Monaco. I'm sorry...


Pic comes from Czguest by Slim Aaron

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