New Face, New Scent: CK Secret Obsession & Eva Mendes

According to a WWD article Calvin Klein is launching a new feminine fragrance this autumn, fronted by sexy Latina actress Eva Mendes to a storm of controversy involving network censors. It was only the other day we were talking about the provocative advertising of original Obsession and here we are again!

The new floriental fragrance, named Secret Obsession, is due out in mid-September. Secret Obsession's juice was produced by Givaudan and art-directed by Ann Gottlieb and encompasses the following notes:
Top: exotic plum, mace and damascena rose
Heart: Egyptian jasmine, French orange flower and tuberose
Base: cashmere woods (a popular aromachemical smelling woody/musky), burnt amber, Madagascar vanilla and Australian sandalwood (since the Mysore variety from India is heavily restricted).

Mendes reportedly really loved it as soon as she tried it! She could be earning $3 million to $5 million over the life of a three-year contract for representing the fragrance, so she would say that, wouldn't she? Still, the composition sounds decent enough, so we will wait and see.
Right now it is the campaign that has the world abuzz. The ad campaign was art-directed by Fabien Baron and the commercials and print ads were shot by Steven Meisel.

"The Obsession brand resonates in a very provocative place," said Catherine Walsh, senior vice president of American fragrances for Coty Prestige, which holds the Calvin Klein Fragrances license. "And we wanted to do a provocative ad. But we're not trying to be raunchy. There's a lot of skin, but it's done tastefully."
Evidently not tastefully enough for the network censors, who have banned the ad. "Every time we do TV [with the Calvin brand] it comes back with some sort of push-back from the networks — but nothing like this. This time," she vowed, "we're going to fight."

Rumours say that it's a combination of what Mendes says — and doesn't say — to the accompaniment of provocative music and lots of skin. Reportedly the ad is open to interpretation, having Mendes talk about a sexy secret, leaving a lot to the imagination, which might conjure up wilder thoughts than what is actually happening. Coty executives declined to reveal the spot before its official unveiling which will happen in early June. (so stay tuned, we will present it when it airs!)

Mendes will also star in Calvin Klein's new women's underwear campaign this fall. According to Mendes herself, she was attracted by the idea of freedom of expression and the chance to appear different in a mainsteam venue:

"When I was approached by Calvin Klein, I thought that it would be so satisfying for me to be part of a campaign where I could show women and girls that it's okay to be different. I remember when the Obsession ads with Kate Moss came out— I thought she was so gorgeous. Kate wasn't a conventional beauty, her teeth weren't perfect and she wasn't blonde; my friends and I could relate to that. If I could provide that encouragement for someone with the Secret Obsession campaign, that would be amazing."

However executives are quick to point out that the new fragrance is really not a new twist, but a completely different perfume with merely a sexy image to share. "This is no flanker," said Walsh. Obviously the meaning of flanker eludes them, as the term is generally being used for fragrances that borrow the name or part thereof of a successful fragrance to boost the recognition factor of a new one. But maybe that's too subtle or splitting hairs.

"Obsession put Calvin Klein on the map in 1985 and continues to be an integral piece of the brand portfolio," added Michele Scannavini, president of Coty Prestige. "Over two decades later, we see it come full circle with Secret Obsession. While Obsession epitomized the overt glamour and sexuality of the Eighties, Secret Obsession will become the meaning of what is sexy today — more personal, sophisticated and intoxicating. Eva Mendes is a reflection of how things have changed over the past 20 years."

Eaux de parfum will be sold in three sizes: 1 oz. for $40, 1.7 oz. for $55 and 3.4 oz. for $72. (The 1-oz. size will be exclusive to Sephora). Two ancillaries will also be sold: a 6.7-oz. body lotion for $38 and a 6.7- oz. shower gel for $30. The scent will be available in about 2,200 department and specialty stores in the U.S. Globally, it will be available in all markets in which the Calvin Klein brand is sold.

Just as an aside: Eva Mendes is no stranger to glossies and advertising as she has posed for Revlon and neither to provocation, as attested by the following film in which she flaunts her assets alongside Joaquin Phoenix to the sound of Heart of Glass : We Own the Night.

So what say you: yay or nay for Eva Mendes and the new fragrance?

Pic via WWD.

The Aroma of the Cherry Bird Tree...and a Poll

"The forest has no hysteric like the bird cherry. Amid the clear-headed firs and the courageous juniper, the bird cherry is a decadent diva whose theatrical attitudes are not appreciated in restrained world of the Finnish forest. If the bird cherry could speak, it would sigh, 'Aah!, 'Oooh!' and 'Dearie me!'"

One of my faithful readers, the very interesting and extremely generous in spirit, the wonderful Stella Polaris, sent me the following link about the Cherry Bird tree of the Finnish forest whose flowers emit a strong, heady almond odor.
Click here to read the rest of the article on the Bird Cherry and what it symbolises, by author Illka Malmberg.



And because it's Friday and your mind is probably wondering...a little poll for you.

1.What is your favorite season?

I love winter and autumn. I guess autumn is more optimistic and wistful at the same time, so it has a slight advantage for me.

2.What is your favorite tree?

Bitter orange for fragrance, poplar for the wonderful swaying sound of the leaves in the wind.

3.Did you read anything good lately?

Not really, most books I took up this spring proved to be disappointing in one way or another. Have high hopes for some Serres I got recommended.

4.What are you going to do this summer?

Rest hopefully! Travel is on the schedule as well, different destinations vying for my attention.

5.What's the first thing you do as soon as the weather warms up?

Kick off socks and hose and get my Jourdan sandals out.

6.Are you looking forward to a summery scent in particular?

I seem to have re-found Vetiver Tonka from the Hermessences and plan on wearing it quite a bit this summer: strikes the perfect balance between warm and cool, sweet and dry.


So what about you? I'd love to hear your thoughts and recs.

Pic of Greek coffee by the Sea, courtesy of in.gr

Un Jardin Apres la Mousson by Hermes: fragrance review

Visiting the Hermès boutique, at which an appointment was made for olfactory appreciation purposes, is a reward in itself. The new summer collection has arrived, in maroquinerie and silk accessories as well as clothes, all in vivid, shocking pinks of India, warm apricots and light greens with themes of elephants and mangoes. And among those the newest fragrance, Un Jardin Après La Mousson (a garden after the monsoon).

This is the latest to join the Jardin trio in the house's more approachable series, which finds itself one regular step behind the grand feminines and masculines and a full rumba step behind the Hermessences. After Un Jardin en Mediteranée, inspired by the Mediterranean and focusing on bittersweet figs and Un Jardin sur le Nil, which focused on green mango (and coming off as grapefruit on a bed of wood shaves), Un Jardin Après La Mousson takes the surprising fruity note of cantaloupe as the thesis for a little summery dance around it, with a sideways wink to Le Parfum de Thérèse in the F.Malle lineup.

Calone, the uber-marine synthetic, is often anathema for myriads of perfume lovers who have declared war on it. Ellena wanted to create a water accord, farther from the usual marine note: I admit I am among the legion who hate Calone and am wondering why it seems like it sneaked its way into a composition that is proclaiming itself a vegetal-spicy. Regarding the latter part, pepper is the protagonist among the spices with its short-wave of coolness, reminiscent of the accord created for Poivre Samarkand. Vetiver in turn disrobes of its earthy, pungent character in a molecular reconstruction by Ellena which sheds the layers of dirty to leave behind a proper and "clean" note that is more like a fabric softener or a good after-shave cream than the viscous essential oil. There is the vegetal theme explored in Kelly Calèche and the mineral aspect of Terre d'Hermès, which combined might appear as laziness, but I suspect is Ellena's way of showing conviction and homogeneity in what he does for the brand.

In the article titled Liquid Assets by Phoebe Eaton for The New York Times, choke full of beautiful pictures, the journey of Jean Claude Ellena to Kerala, India (the cornerstone in the spice market) in a quest for inspiration is recounted for our benefit. Staying at the Kumarakom Lake Resort on the shores of Vembanad Lake in February, Ellena profited from a sojourn in the tropics. And it would be wicked to suggest he goes for such ideas for the chance to do so.

Observation: Jean Claude, despite his identity card and citizenship, doesn't look French. He doesn't dress French. More importantly he doesn't compose perfumes in the French tradition. Instead, he looks Italian (which he is in part) or Greek (which I'd like to think he is judging by his name) and his whole outlook on life and art seems focused in the sparsity and translucence of style that is embedded in the classical tradition of those two cultures. He accepts ornamentation when it serves functionality or innovation, but not otherwise. Like an architect who shuns Caryatids when they don't actually support something or a couturier who abhors brooches which don't hold a dress in place.

He also seems to compose for the particular micro-climate of those two countries, as the rising temperatures of late spring and summer are especially simpatico to the cooling feel of his Jardins, but also Hermessences series. Those scents act as portable air-conditioning around a person, giving an effect of dry cool without the fizzy banalité of sodas perpetuated by the pink fruity florals on the market. I predict his latest offering will sell well in warmer countries which are however removed from the tradition of opulence.

To judge his latest offering we should question ourselves:
Is he loyal to his vision? He assuredly is. He is honing his style, stretching it to its maximum extremities, trying to ascertain that upon sniffing people will exclaim "Mais, c'est un Ellena!" the way they would do it for a Picasso or a Pollock. And incidentally always subtracting, just as they did. He goes for abstraction, not realism.
Is he faithful to Kerala, India? Not particularly, and maybe the fact that the fragrance got promoted in that way leaves something to be desired in the perfume-lover's stakes, much like the leather tag did for Kelly Caleche. It's usually unthinkable to do India without copious amounts of spice and orientalised compositions, although Patou with his Sira des Indes went for the novel approach succesfully with his banana-laced fruity a while ago.
Is he loyal to the Hermès style? This is the trickiest question of the three. Hermès has gone through a dramatic shift in image by hiring Ellena. The older fragrances exuded a luxurious feel of an upscale, very expensive boutique for the elite with the inclusion of precious materials and the honeyed scents of perceived affluence. That image was luxe but also a tad stuffy, prim, too bon chic bon genre and thus ultimately a cliché. The new direction of luxury demands airier scents, ingredients that look humble but perform on a higher level than their constituents (a reconstructed "clean" vetiver for Mousson, a mineral accord for brilliant Terre d'Hermès, a floral-smelling suede note for Kelly Calèche) which, like the recent trend in gastronomy that put back humble rocket on our tables after what seemed like decades, dubs you as not trying too hard. And proper chic, the chic that Hermès is obviously aiming at, is never trying too hard.

In those terms, Un Jardin Après la Mousson is succesful for what it set out to do. Whether it would be my first choice for personal fragrance is seriously debatable. Un Jardin sur le Nil proved to be so lovable and so suited to my summer sensibilities that I am not considering to replace it with the new one. I don't see a void in my collection, to be honest. But I wouldn't resort to aphorisms either!

The fragrance is completely unisex and marketed as such. It performs much better on skin than on the mouillette (blotter) where it loses much of its piquancy. It is rather fleeting however, in comparison to the other Jardins who hold their own well, and might stay put longer if you spray fabric, on which it also performs well.
The complimentary body products (body mist without alcohol: 42euros for 100ml, body lotion: 39euros for 200ml, shower gel: 33euros for 200ml ~and the two limited edition products dry oil: 40euros for 100ml and body mist without alcohol: 42euros for 100ml) are luxurious, though less scented than the Eau de toilette. The latter is presented in a gorgeous bottle which has a degradé of shades from the cap down, from light green to vivid blue and the box illustrations are simply adorable.

Notes: cardamom, coriander, pepper, ginger, Kahili ginger flower (not related to ginger root), vetiver.

Available at the Hermès Boutique US and France, the physical Hermès boutiques, at Saks and soon in department stores worldwide.
Eau de toilette: 83 euros for 100ml

And if you have a few minutes to spare in fun, click here.

Pic via Hermes, boxes courtesy of the Purseblog.com

Obsessive Compulsions

When Calvin Klein came out with Obsession and Obsession for Men in the 1980s, his reputation as a sexual provocateur was consolidated beyond any reasonable doubt. He had started with hinting at it through his infamous Jeans commercials featuring an underage Brooke Shields sineously asking "What comes between me and my Calvins?", to which the answer was of course "Nothing!"; but the perfumes had the potential of allowing so much more!
So today we're devoting space to a brilliant marketeer and the beautiful and disturbing connotations emerging from an admittedly legendary duo of fragrances.

In some cases the experiment was bordering on the paedophilic, earning Calvin a ban in the US with the following commercial which naughtily used the tagline "Love is child's play when you've known Obsession". But this only raised awareness of the brand, boosting sales. It was so infamous in fact that it got satirized on Saturday Night Live as Compulsion, hence the title of today's post.



And in some others, it took a turn for the utterly poetic, borrowing passages from literature accompanied by black and white artistic videos.
First from F.Scott Fitzerald and his The Great Gatsby (chapter6), in an ad directed by David Lynch and featuring Heather Graham and Benicio del Toro in 2001.



Or from D.H Lawrence, from Women in Love, again directed by David Lynch in the same year.




And then, there is this very funny reference to Obsession for Men in a very sweet, very touching, endearing little film, The Sum of Us, starring Russel Crowe, John Polson and Jack Thompson :
click here to watch the hilarious clip
Two potential partners who happen to be gay and share the fragrance one of them loves. And two dads respectively with funny quips about Obsession for Men: one unaware of the son's sexual identity and disapproving of the cologne, another good-naturedly accepting the lifestyle and raising a brow on excess...
But let's not spoil the fun (and a second scented reference towards the end!). Please watch for yourselves!

Clip of 1985 commercial of Obsession originally uploaded by beegib. Clips from 2001 uploaded by austinstar and spdelgado respectively.
Clip from the film The Sum of Us originally uploaded by Osloairport on Youtube.

The winner...

It's finally time for the big winner of the lucky samples draw: it's Pavlova.
Please mail me with an address so I can send a goody bag your way!

Thank you all for participating in this draw and hope you join me again for the next one soon.