Jennifer Aniston went topless for the promotion of her new scent Lola Vie (basically LOL @ vie, which means "life" in French, as we had pointed out when first announcing the news on the scent). The campaign was shot at Cabo San Lucas in Mexico which happens to be Jennifer's favourite spot. The New York Daily News mentions: "In a series of sexy black-and-white shots to promote her new scent, Lolavie, the 41-year-old actress looks stunning as she poses topless, covering her chest with just her arms while wearing nothing but a white skirt hung low on her hips." The international campaign starts on Wednesday at Harrods department store in London where she will meet and greet customers and sign bottles for them. Personally I don't think the campaign looks half bad. It's suggestive but not vulgar. What do you think?
EDIT TO ADD: A reader informs me that despite aspirations, the name was dropped in favour of simply "Jennifer Aniston" due to concerns over the already existing Lola by Marc Jacobs.
Britney Spears on the other hand isn't known for her non vulgarized image. In fact I'd bet there are good bucks to be made in actually condoning a vulgarized image, for some reason! Anyway, the troubled Pop princess has a lucrative business in the perfume segment nevertheless with 8 fragrances under her belt and counting...The 9th one, Radiance is set to launch this coming September 2010 and is purported to be a ‘stylish’ perfume. Encased in a faux rhinestone encrusted bottle, the girly design is blue and pink. Radiance by Britney Spears will smell like a bunch of ‘wild berries and soft, dewy petals’ which will include tuberose, jasmine, orange flower and iris. According to reports the new scent Radiance is set to be released in September. Prices? It will retail for $63 for 50 mL; $78 for 100 mL. Where? At Ebay, Sears and Pharmaprix/Shopper’s Crug Mart. Possibly the new fragrance will tie with a new album set to be released this year according to inside gossip. We'll see. In the TV commercial, Spears sneaks out of a theatre to avoid a waiting crowd of photographers and fans. She then visits a fortune-teller, who asks the singer if she wants her to tell her about her future. “No thanks, I choose my own destiny,” replies Spears. (we will update when the clip becomes available)
Technology would get to perfume; it was only a matter of time! Studies had suggested that "particularly among young people, there is no propensity to buy perfume, but on the contrary, they are enthusiastic about technology" (according to Maurizio Volpi). So in order to boost perfume sales, what better than to engage them through technology? This after all is the method employed by several companies of other products as well: entice with something irrelevant so as to stir into the wanted direction. We "consume" loads of digital media every day (blogging, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.) so is this the new direction, especially for luxury brands to communicate their message? And is this message a frank one? Vivien Westwood had said during a speech at Unesco: "We can lie to one person once, two persons twice.... but never to everyone everytime".
According to the press release by Givaudan who introduced the iPerfumer application (for iPhone) in mid-June, shortly after beauty giant Estée Lauder announced its Ascent iPhone application to facilitate in-store perfume shopping: "Givaudan, the industry-leading perfumery house has created a unique tool to help individuals select their perfect fragrance. Now available for free download from the Apple App Store, iPerfumer offers individuals tailored advice on which perfumes to try, removing the confusion that often surrounds choosing perfume. Revolutionary in its approach, iPerfumer is a personal fragrance consultant in your pocket. It provides fragrance recommendations to help make informed choices, either for yourself, or when buying gifts for others". The technique is a rather standard one, pioneered by Michael Edwards who also has his own "recommendations" method on his Fragrances of the World site and has Sephora utilize his system (by fragrance sub-families and common notes). On iPerfumer, after identifying yourself by sex, age and country, you're asked to take note of the six olfactory families proposed (Citrus / Chypre / Floral / Fougere / Oriental / Woody) ~famous examples for each provided to make it easy for novices. Then you can enter some of the perfumes which you like. And after processing those results, the application recommends several fragrances for you personally. But is the new iPerfumer application as plain sailing as all that? We decided to investigate.
Michel Gutsatz, a brand strategy expert at The Scriptorium Company and the head of Le Jardin Retrouve, takes a critical look at the iPerfumer application by Givaudan at LuxurySociety.com. His doubts corner three drawbacks which also seem crucial to me: no motivation to try out the recommended fragrances (no info, no story, nothing), lack of ergonomy in acessing previous part of the profile created, "sterile" treatment of perfumery (the application doesn't create any of the inherent magic of perfume). The matter of Augmented Reality (a hot topic that garnered a lot of momentum after the success of James Cameron's Avatar) surfaces when talking about how the iPhone rates compared to other methods. iPhone applications are entertaining, but the technology within the iPhone (and soon the iPad) is not yet able to unlock the true potential of Augmented Reality to the same extent that different media (a web-cam enabled shop display, a home computer or laptop) can. In the luxury industry (and perfumes do belong there for better or worse) where gimmicks are usually not taken very seriously will the iPhone and its applications find the fertile ground they need to catch the eye of the consumer and would they need to make the leap from "techie geek" to "lifestyle" to do so?
My additional qualm is that the results garnered on the iPerfumer often bear little relation to what a seasoned perfume enthusiast would expect out of the submitted information to begin with. But bearing in mind how in order to get recommendations in the first place, you're asked to "rate" (enough) fragrances according to preference, I would think that the ulterior purpose of the application is to provide Givaudan with an extraordinary cheap market research tool via which to monitor the scented tastes of iPhone users worldwide! And it does look like it's going to be updated at intervals, with a version 2.0 to roll around when there is need for yet more monitoring and see how tastes have evolved.
...for a full bottle of pure parfum by DSH Musk Eau Natural is Dionne! Congratulations!!
Please email me with a shipping address so I can forward to the perfumer to get your prize in the mail for you soon.
Thanks everyone for playing along and till the next one.
I'm reminding you that there are still three members who haven't contacted me for the Aftelier giveaway (or you can email Mandy at Aftelier directly): Lilacskin, Arch.memory and Lavanya. Please do so, the prizes care waiting to get mailed to you!
I will be announcing the winners of the full Tauer bottles giveaway in a short while.
And there will be a full review of a much anticipated non-yet launched perfume later on. ;-)
Wrapped-up as we so often are in the aphorisms about what we should or shouldn't be wearing ~ according to fashion trends, occasion, the weather or merely how sleepy we have rolled out of bed (you get my point)~ we often forget that perfume primarily has to do with sheer enjoyment! Yes, fitting the surroundings is all fine & dandy and probably earns us brownie points, but what about surprising our entourage (nay, surprising ourselves!) with unexpected choices that don't become stinkbombs either in the summer heat? While discussing this issue with my pal The Non Blonde we came up with memories about summers past, when no one really was wearing citrus dependables like Eau d'Hadrien and when the beauty of Chanel's Sycomore(or Guerlain's Vetiver pour Ellealternatively) hadn't been invented yet.
Here are some of my personal choices, which I have been enjoying on really hot ~and less than that~ summer days & nights. [Links direct you to full on reviews].
Lightweight Ambers
I'm a child all over again: There is something nuzzling and welcome about ambers which seem to bloom when there is warmth around. No wonder they were first composed in the Middle East. For me, the non sweet, diaphanous ones which often leave a trail of frankincense remind me of the Aegean...the hot beach, the white church, the wreaths of flowers inside...
Tropical, lush ylang ylang and slightly medicinal, non sweet amber sing a duet: the feeling of lying down on sugar-span sand, sun high above baking skin. And worries? Like a blister in the sun...they burst!
*I Profumi di Firenze Ambra del Nepal
Not Nepalese, really; I wore this on the island of Santorini, sketching the ruins at Akrotiri, diving at Palaia Kameni and seeing the sun set an agonisingly slow death at Oia. Something about the volcanic earth, all black and scorched, mixed well with this incensy amber with its cool finish. Making me fall in love with life all over again.
Misnomer of the century: There's nothing wintery about this amber. Much like L'Eau d'Hiver is actually the peachy fuzz of a cloud in a springtime Monet sky, this light, powdery, easy amber is fluff and cotton coolness itself. A distant friend, who has since silenced herself, introduced me to it and I think its splash form is ~for once in perfumery~ perfectly apt: You want to bathe it in and its fleeting nature allows you to, come summer or winter. So very easy that you'd never need think about it.
Fangly, Cool Chypres
What is it about cerebral chypres that appeals in the heat? Is it that I do hail from the Mediterranean where they naturally flourished? Probably. I just know they make me shiver with pleasure.
I first discovered the emerald green scalpel of Silences one summer when I was studying Italian "without toil" in order to accomodate university needs: required reading involved a certain Italian doctor who didn't have the good grace to get his research translated in any other language. One long-winded morning in the library ended into perfume discussion with the librarian assistant who was wearing...Silences. No pun whatsoever, I swear!
Bandit has long been my "sexy summer scent" when I'm all sweaty. In fact I cherish being sweaty when I'm wearing it, which is as rare a reaction for me as snowing in the middle of August is for weather forecasts in southern Europe. Why, you ask? Because the heat seems to bring out the very best elements in that state of undeliberate disarray, which might be indicative of its mischievous, promiscuous proclivities in the first place; after all Germaine Cellier did undress models off the runway off their underwear for "study" while composing.
Zen has the bitter, cool taste that you expect brainy, tech-geek types to appreciate: Calatrava architecture, smoked aubergines and Pernod. It doesn't smell of any of these things, of course, but I happened to discover the vintage edition (there are at least three versions, see this) one summer when all these were combined in a whirwind in my life. The summer Olympics had come to Athens and though nothing was zen-like, Zen gave me some grounding and sang froid.
*Guerlain Derby
My wild card and an ace in the sleeve at that. Consider this the classiest choice among them all and save the best for last. Is it fair that it's intended for men? I should think adventurous women who were never tomboys would not only "get away with it", but would highlight its luxurious character even more. Basically Guerlain took the formulaic leather structure and span it on its head, adding the cool bitterness of artemisia and a minty note which make this one the chypre equivalent of the ice-cubes I melt on my chest on summer mornings when I can't bring myself to get dressed. I particularly enjoy the bracing, strident top! Wonderful in vintage form (1985), still amazing in the current Les Parisiennes edition and that's hopeful.
Spicy Orientals
Not your typical "summery" category for sure. Yet sometimes they sing magically, with all the bright peak of crystal on a Fellini-esque ship of fools like our lives occasionaly become.
*Yves Saint Laurent OpiumFleur de Shangai
Opium summer editions have all been really good, which is almost a sacrilegious thought now that the real deal has been butchered irrevocably. This one is my favourite of the bunch, worn during romantic evening walks at the seashore, its orchid powderiness a welcome lightening -but not diluting- of the density of the original when it's been 38C all day.
It's so easy to dismiss a spicy oriental, and a dressy one at that, on the power of its prowess. Well, fear not, the aldehydes and clove combo in this one gives the clean feeling of iron passing clean linen and the pepper spice would scare microbes on a petri-dish away. Big nights out, you're covered!
*L'Artisan Poivre Piquant
If Parfum Sacré had a little sister, permeated with eroticism, soft and pliable, this would be she. Drier, more reflective and without the emphatic rosiness, Poivre Piquant weaves in a cooling trail of incense into its peppercorns goodness to cut through the heat like tiny diamonds cut through crystal.
Don't forget to check out Gaia's atypical choices & memories at The Non Blonde.
For a more familiar, summer-friendly fragrance wardrobe for every occasion, please check last year's entry on this link.
Clips from the films The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (2005) by Sanaa Hamri, Le Mépris/Contempt (1963) by Jean-Luc Godard and E la Nave Va (And the Ship Sails On, 1973) by Federico Fellini. Photo Swallow Dive (SPAARNESTAD PHOTO by Het Leven) via the Nationaal Archief
The name Dionysus, coming from the classical god of wine but also of sacred ecstasis/έκστασις (i.e.divine madness), is indicative of the mood set: restlessness, abandon, raw energy. Then again the fragrances by Lord's Jester ~composed by all-naturals perfumer Adam Gottschalk~ do often bear ancient names (Ares, Zephyr, Demeter, Hera, Phoebe, Selena etc). Does it have to do with a Grecophile German-roots past? Is it a homage to an august culture that was so in tune with its natural surroundings yet managed to harness them through reason, as natural perfumers would hope to do with natural ingredients? Dionysus is indeed wild, untamed, very potent, with a rich trail like a strong moschato wine. The formula seems short, focused on the raw potency of a few select ingredients rather than delicate accords of numerous essences.
Perhaps there is a wine note in the opening, or the effect which I associate with it, the tannic facets in cognac essence, which I know natural perfumers use. The Bacchic, orgiastic ambience is rendered through a lush floral with an oily, narcotic backdrop (possibly narcissus) and the powerful inclusion of African stone, more commonly known as hyraceum. Possibly repulsively sourced, as it is reconstituted via the excrement of a small African animal, but providing a strong pheromonic and territory-marking aroma that would have animals go wild nevertheless. Still, the overall composition is not what I would call musky or floral musk, not in the manner that real deer musk smells (rather urinous) or in the mould that the fragrance industry has accustomed us to musk (warm, powdery, nuzzling), diverging from my own preconceptions. It's pheromone-rich, growling at several feet away, but of a different kind than human, bringing out the Cat People. Or a modern day Maenad.
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