Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Dior & LVMH: What the Hell?

I was sort of ruminating the other day about Dior using Marilyn Monroe, Grace Kelly and Marlene Dietrich for the new film commercial for their J'Adore fragrance. Apparently something is very rotten at LVMH who owns the brand and things are taking an awry turn in general.



A while ago it was publicized that they had taken an old, iconic photo of French heartthrob and (mesmerizing eyed) actor Alain Delon in all its beauty, had digitally erased the dangling cigarette from his manly fingers in the original shoot (which you can see on our post here) to conform with political correctness and had then used the photo to promote their classic ~ruggedly masculine, yet elegant~ scent Eau Sauvage. It worked brilliantly sales-wise. I assume that there was some private deal behind the scenes between the actor and the group, or at least the person who held the rights for the photograph, but this time they're going too far. Because who owns the rights for an icon like Monroe or Dietrich?
So, in light of the latest, I am reminding you there is not only one, but two commercials for Eau Sauvage which use whole excerpts from the classic 1960s film La Piscine by Jacques Deray, in which Alain Delon struts his suave physique and virile attitude to great aplomb. Obviously they must have had permission from the producers, but I find the whole experiment rather crass and pathetic. I realize men of Delon's ilk are rare and icons such as Monroe, Kelly, Dietrich or indeed John Lennon (earning Yoko Ono a huge amount of money each year) are timeless, but surely they could have been at least rather more imaginative in their take chez LVMH, just like they could have been more imaginative while promoting their J'Adore. I'm not sure I' comfortable with where Dior is going nowadays...



7 comments:

  1. Eleonore20:09

    How right hou are! Being French and witnessing LVMH's manners, I agree with you completely: unimaginative they are...ergo, the contrary of true artists! But their aim is not Beauty but Money ("nous n'avons pas les mêmes valeurs" sigh! )
    Poor Christian Dior, he wouldn't recognize a thing in his "maison": he was so creative himself!

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  2. The uninspired advertising reflects pretty well the (much more serious) debasing of Dior's perfumes.

    But regarding the specific case, how different is the current Eau Sauvage from the vintage one? Is the oakmoss restriction a serious problem for Eau Sauvage?

    cacio

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  3. Why, for heavens' sake, can't they come up with something new? Unless they make something in the spirit of the 50's, why don't they grab any random cute chick from the street?

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  4. At least Alain Delon is still alive. Using dead celebrities to sell stuff grosses me out. How tacky!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Doc,

    haha! Good point! :-D

    (Chanel, are you listening?)

    ReplyDelete
  6. M,

    late but better than never.

    I don't think the oakmoss is a huge problem for the formula of ES. I suppose the citruses are much more of a problem in that one. ;-)

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  7. Not a big worry,move on.😫

    ReplyDelete

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