Another niche perfume brand bought up by a giant corporation

We have been reporting this snatching up of smaller niche fragrance brands for some time now because it shows just how powerful capitalism is and just how businesses need cash to flourish and expand. Or perhaps how the dream of founding a brand is to eventually sell it to a bigger stake? In any case, the latest news revolves around an interesting (and seemingly contradictory?) acquisition.

According to Fragrantica who reports based on the Business Wire reportage:

"Estee Lauder started to build a strong portfolio of prestige perfume brands with the aquisition of Tom Ford. Recently, Le Labo and Editions de Parfums Frédéric Malle have also come under EL control. Now, Kilian Hennessy -  the grandson of the founder of The LVMH Group - sold his brand to EL, although everyone was always hinting at the big support of LVMH behind By Kilian."



It's also reported on The Street Insider. (section Acquisitions/Mergers)

The Lauder Group portfolio currently includes: Estée Lauder, Aramis, Clinique, Prescriptives, Lab Series, Origins, Tommy Hilfiger, M·A·C, Kiton, La Mer, Bobbi Brown, Donna Karan New York, DKNY, Aveda, Jo Malone London, Bumble and bumble, Michael Kors, Darphin, Tom Ford, Smashbox, Ermenegildo Zegna, AERIN, Marni, Tory Burch, RODIN olio lusso, Le Labo, Editions de Parfums Frédéric Malle, GLAMGLOW, By Kilian.

My grumbling had began in 2013 when I lamented the "loss" to Big Market of L'Artisan Parfumeur and later Diptyque and Penhaligon's. And it was back then that I featured a true indie's views on how the market works and what lies in the future ahead. When Frederic Malle was bought by Lauder in 2015 the furore spread on online communities like wildfire. And Le Labo's acquisition too.

It's safe to assume that if your favorite fragrance niche brand is expanding, issuing more and more perfumes and accessory products (candles, linen sprays, hair scents etc.) it's bound to get sold very very soon! However if The Aesthetic Principle® should apply, fear not; you shouldn't feel guilty of fanning the fires of capitalism.

But let's revert to the case at hand. An originally LVMH company bought up by the Lauder Group. A company headed by someone related to LVMH bought up by the Lauder group. We live in interesting times!

Le Secret d'Arielle by Mauboussin: new fragrance & collaboration

News of a collaboration between French jewelers & fragrance brand Mauboussin and French-American actress & singer Arielle Dombasle left me with an instant feeling of heightened, impatient expectation. The reason is twofold: on the one hand the great reputation of Mauboussin perfumes (not to mention the diamond jewels!), on the other the notoriety of Dombasle as a true lover of perfume. In fact, her signature scent has long held something of a fascination to me, back when I was compiling my perfumes worn by celebrities list almost 15 years ago, being highly responsive to her personal choices.

Pierre Olivier Deschamps photography

"Whatever her raison d’être française — like playing catch-up for having been born in the United States and raised in Mexico — she has mastered that oh-so-French savoring of every delicious whiff of life that Americans, as the prejudice goes, like to turn up their noses at.
That is evident by the cloud of perfume in which she arrives for lunch; let others travel by car. “I can live without lipstick, without a hairbrush, but I cannot live without perfume,” she said. “What did the kings bring to the baby Jesus? The ingredients of perfume. It’s the basis of ... ” She trailed off, gesturing as if to indicate the whole world. [...]
Dombasle is not content just to dab on a bit of store-bought stuff, a 20th-century practice she derides as lacking in imagination. Rather, she concocts her own mixture from Cuir de Russie by Chanel, Aromatic Elixir by Clinique and a cheap off-brand white musk she stockpiles from a shop on the Lower East Side. (NYC) "
[source]

Her new fragrance, in collaboration with Mauboussin and the perfumers in charge of creating the formula, is called Secret d'Arielle and comes in a 30ml extrait de parfum. If you want to read a review of it, there's one on Fragrantica.

For those of you wondering: the star of David on the bottle probably alludes to her Jewish husband, French philosopher and writer Bernard-Henri Lévy, affectionately referred to as BHL by the French. Apparently my eyes are not as they were. It's a pentacle.

Revisiting the Neglected: Shop Your Fragrance Wardrobe

The notion of "shopping your wardrobe" is hot on fashion and style blogs right now. The idea of a judged frugality has something appealing to it. Like controlling someone's life, an illusion of being in control at the very least. It also makes for worthwhile discoveries at the back of the pile; that rah-rah skirt from high school can't be worn again, but looks at those leggings from the early 1990s! And the perfectly cut jean jackets from the same period, not laser-cut but just as straight and lean? (Lean and long was big in the 1990s, my friends).

Hermes campaign 2012, shot at the oldest olive tree, on Aegina island, Greece

The same principle can be applied to one's fragrance wardrobe. Imagine if we dived at the back of our wardrobes and fished the fragrances we wear little of. With huge collections for the majority of us, the loot should be highly stimulating. Thus began the "Shop Your Fragrance Wardrobe" idea!

I unearthed something truly gorgeous which I had not been wearing for a long, long time. The reasons? I'm not exactly rewriting Das Kapital, but I do breach a bit on it, in a way. Find the article on this link and please share your own neglected fragrances which you recently rediscovered in the comments.

Dior Poison Girl (2016): fragrance review

One can blame LVMH for many things, but not for not knowing how to milk a thing on their hands. The Poison fragrance brand is a huge success for Parfums Christian Dior and not without good reason. Distinctive, aggressively noticeable, innovative at their time, the Poison perfume series has provided us with memorable fragrances. The new Poison Girl, out in February 2016 in my country, may fall short on the memorability stakes, but there's a clever twist inside to reflect one of the cleverest (and most enduringly popular) in the canon, the almond-powder feel of Hypnotic Poison inside a "youthful" sweet fruits and caramel medley.

collage made by Le Coeur Gothique (on parfumo.net)

It has been said that pop songs consist of recycling the same handful of chords, as one smart reader reminded me the other day, and the universe is well aware of my belief in fragrances' intertextuality (there's no parthenogenesis in art), so it comes as little surprise that I don't deem that bad in itself if the resulting collage is eye-grabbing. On the contrary it's a smart move by perfumer Francois Demachy, who oversees the creation process at Dior (no stranger to artistic influence themselves). Hypnotic Poison has created its own history and legend, and like Mugler's Angel basic chord before it, serves as a pop reference that pops up everywhere. Why not in the mother of all Poisons, aka Dior?

Poison Girl starts with a sweet, toffee like fruitiness of orange hard candy which vaguely recalls half the current market (La vie est Belle, Tresor La Nuit, Black Opium, Loverdose, Flowerbomb...), with a cherry cough syrup hint, that predisposes an avid Poison lover for toothache, but thankfully cedes to a powdery almond within the hour where it stays for the duration. Seeing as Hypnotic Poison Eau Sensuelle got to the good part straight away, I can only surmise that the intent is to grab a specific demographic interested in the rather tacky gourmand top note and who might come to love the development regardless.

LVMH needed something to spar with L'Oreal and they got it. Not bad.

A footnote on the ad campaign:
Rather lost on the advertising and naming of Dior's Poison Girl, personally speaking.
"Girl" sounds demeaning (would they have called a masculine fragrance "boy" if it would appeal to young men? Edit to add: Apparently they would, but there's a reason). The night club pictures with model and actress Camille Rowen holding a cigarette in her nubile hands under the No Smoking signs and her defiant (try stoned) look under her $200-posing-for-bed-head haircut looks as rebellious as a straight A's pupil going for an Anthropology major instead of the prescribed Law School.  Is "no bras" the fighting field of young girls today? I very much doubt it.
At least the previous Poison editions had bold, imaginative, suggestive advertising. This is lame.

Paying Good Money on Shampoo-Worth Perfume Formula

The most spontaneous posts on Perfume Shrine often involve a small rant and this is one of them. The ideas for the rants also strike me as I'm going through the motions; no preplanned, big thinking dissertation projects, which is probably why they come out of the blue. The other day was one such day of an unwelcome epiphany, concerning several issues we have touched on this site before: similarity between current perfumes, recycling of ideas and ingredients while not revealing sources under penalty of Chinese torture, focus group practices that deprive any originality, pricing of fine fragrance at fine fragrance level while the perfume formula obviously costs as much as a mass-range shampoo... Unlike wanting to find a dupe for MAC Ruby Woo lipstick or DiorShow mascara, perfume stands for something that can't be irrefutably compared in qualitative terms by the average consumer. With cosmetics, it's right there in your face, you can't deny it. With perfume...not as easy to claim your case.

What made me have this light-bulb light up in my brain? Simple. Re-smelling the best-selling (or so it seems from the commentary and the numerous flankers) Chloe Eau de Parfum, the re-orchestrated one from a few years ago.

It smells like -effing- L'Eau d'Issey! 

Now, the two fragrances, L'Eau d'Issey (feminine) from 1992 and Chloe Eau de Parfum (2008) share no common notes apart from rose I believe (which scent doesn't, you ask). You can compare their respective fragrance notes pyramids here and here. Of course seasoned readers of this blog already know notes do NOT correspond to actual ingredients in the formula; they're meant to convey an olfactory impression. But still huge numbers of people review Chloe EDP as rosy, as well as soapy (and it is sudsy in a very sharp, shrill way most definitely, as I had said in my fragrance review of reformulated Chloe eau de parfum, comparing it with the vintage ). The same doesn't happen for the modern classic floral aquatic by Miyake of course, people view it as watery, aquatic, white floral; no rose, no powder, no soap.
In fact I see that I had already mentioned that the Chloe EDP opening reminds me of L'Eau d'Issey all those years back when I first wrote the review in 2008. Can't be blamed for a reformulation, then.

But wait a minute. Are people that suggestive, then? Not quite.

Here is one reviewer of Chloe on Fragrantica, blurting it out in plain sight:

wooedwithpeonies

I must say I was a bit disappointed with this perfume. Only because I was really expecting a super floraly rose. But I got none of that. Instead on my skin it's a fresh fruit with the tinest hint of something floral. On my skin it smell exactly like bombshell from Victoria's Secret. I got no hit of anything rose and the peonies only stuck around for about 5 minutes. The search for the most Rosie perfume continues....

And even though there are tons of other reviewers insisting on the classiness or uniqueness of it (and they do have a perfect right to like it and wear it in good health), I strained my eyes to find someone hinting at what I had perceived at of the blue.
In the end it does seem I am not alone, nor mad at feeling the similarity.
Here it is:

calma

The shared name of this distinguished fashion house,
together with its exquisitely designed bottle,
would make you think that what´s inside holds at least some of the same quality.

Not so.
This is actually one of the greatest disappointments
I have come across, if I may say so.
The fragrance itself reminds me of the crude 'aquatic'
(based on the note of Calone) Issey Miyake L´Eau d´Issey.
With added cheap cotton-candy-ingredients for a more 'feminine' style.
Clean? Well, like a chemical lab I suppose.
Easy to sum up for me; a dull, generic, all-synthetic-'muguet-rose' made by some team who doesn´t care one bit about perfume.

The most fascinating part of it is Chloe EDP smells identical to the cheap chemist's dupes of L'Eau d'Issey sold in plain glass bottles for a buck! Even the formula of the Miyake is considered "expensive" nowadays? 

This valuable lesson also teaches us something important: Familiarity is of paramount importance in perfume tastes. We like what we're familiar with. If an idea has worked once, it will work again, assuming the time lapse is just right; too soon and you risk being called out as derivative, too long and you risk being considered as moldy as an attic full of mothball-preserved clothes.
This is why the industry churns out endless variations on a known theme. And when the theme is considered somewhat passé, they recycle it under a different campaign, a different image and a different set of notes. But it does smell very, very similar all the same.

Consider where your buck flows to.

For those reading Greek, please consult my article on Perfume Sameness on this link.
Next, we will have a niche samples giveaway, stay tuned!