Everything Old is New Again: the Bell Jar

In recent years we have seen an endless recycling of design, ideas, DIY tricks and products that reference the past, in a spin of retromania, which started after the millennium. But even back in the 1990s it seems the adage held firm, with an otherwise iconoclastic artistic director getting inspired by the past. Not that he hadn't already been inspired in other ways, but it's striking to see the very design that he established as "his" being offered by a very mainstream brand 50 years before.

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And so my research led me to the discovery of the Shulton company bell jars, presented as a redesign of their fragrant offerings in 1944. And for none other than Old Spice, the classic reference for men, which started its illustrious history as a ...women's fragrance. Almost 50 years before the Salons de Palais Royal fragrances which were presented in bell jars by none other than Serge Lutens.
And sometimes, a few times, those bear references to an even further distant past...such as medieval manuscripts' art.

Limited edition of Serge Lutens Rousse

Further Reading on the PerfumeShrine:

Art History and Perfume Ads

Serge Lutens news & fragrance reviews

Art in Perfumery

Optical Scentsibilities: the Kiss by the Piano or The History of the Tabu Vintage Perfume Ads

Who hasn't been swept by the passion of the old Tabu by Dana perfume advertisements showing a female pianist passionately embraced and kissed by a male violinist? "Tabu, the forbidden fragrance" ("un parfum de puta", as per the fragrance brief to perfumer Jean Carles, no less) recounted to the reader that "Things  don't happen the way they used to. But they still happen." Kinda Fabbio-jacket cover dreamy, eh? In fact more artistic than initially thought of, so a great subject for our Optical Scentsibilities feature exploring the connection between art history & perfume images.

Tabu the fragrance, coming out in 1932, isn't that far removed from the painting that actually inspired the iconography of this advertisement, which is The Kreutzer Sonata painting by René François Xavier Prinet in 1901. (Itself inspired by the homonymous Leo Tolstoy novella which dramatizes a husband's jealous rage over a wife's "animal excesses" and making a case for sexual abstinence, the literary artwork itself referencing Beethoven's Kreutzer Sonata, originally dedicated to the violinist George Bridgetower who by insulting the morals of a woman in Beethoven's admired list lost the dedication to his peer, Kreutzer. Talk about meta-galore and war of the sexes on this one!)

via wikipedia commons

The specific advertisement depicted on the top is only one generation ahead of the original perfume launch (please note all the ancillary products mentioned at the bottom, such as soap, dusting powder and lipstick the Tabu brand has under its belt), but boy, how had mores changed in the interim!

Tabu continued on the path of the "painting like" advertisements and has a pleiad of vintage perfume ads (as shown on a dedicated blog from 2009). Among my favorites is this one, showing a woman in front of the iconic painting, cleverly referenced in the background, reading "When Tabu becomes a part of you, you become apart from all others". (ain't that the truth!)

Finally Tabu reprised the violinist with a nude male model posing for a 1990s fashions-clad woman painter (what a genius meta-meta-comment on Dana's part!)

The transcription of the values and tropes of oil paintings into perfume advertising in particular is stunning, straddling the contradictory notions of wealth and spirituality. Using the work of art as a quote acts as a potent sign of cultural authority; in a way it confirms the wisdom and appraisal ability of the viewer and acts as a reminder of being a cultured European (or a cultured partaker of the European values of aesthetics, at the very least)

This post today brings me nicely to the observation that I had made in a previous installement of the Optical Scentsibilities articles exploring the ties of perfume advertising and art history that sometimes the image you see is not only "inspired" by a painting/iconic photo (such as "Las Meninas" did for Paco Rabanne pour Homme or the Madame de Pompadour painting by Francois bouchet did for countless "reclining" poses in recent perfume ads) but it accurately reproduces the art work down to the smallest detail, as was the case with The Divers (utilized by Guy Laroche for Horizon). or Watteau's "The Swing" reprised in 1999 by Estee Lauder for Pleasures perfume featuring their model at the time Liz Hurley.

via ebay

via wikimedia commons

A timely reminder that perfume imagery isn't as frivolous and low-brow as initially thought of.