Electron Rants: Niche Perfumes Quantum Mechanics

Not a day goes by that I don't get an offer of some sampling opportunity in the mail and in all fairness most don't create any bleep on the pond, audible, visible or otherwise. I suppose you're guessing that anyway. Considering that so much effort goes into producing a perfume in this industry, with months ahead of brain storming into how to present it, how to market it, and of course how to compose it -and I should know because I worked in launching a couple of things myself- it's perhaps no surprise that people come up with things more surprising than they truly are. I sympathise. You don't come across genius every day. But from genius to lackluster down to b-o-r-i-n-g, now there's a huge leap. And I'm surprised that perfume releases with no business being in the running in the first place are getting released at all, just because the fragrance market in niche and prestige is cannonballing along something fierce. To use a physics analogy, it's a sort of "Dirac sea", an infinite sea of particles with negative energy.

Read the NPD Group's findings, an acclaimed market monitoring tool:

"For prestige fragrances, the segment experienced the strongest dollar and unit performance in 15 years, coming in at $2.8 billion, which marked growth of 11%, while units grew 7%. Juices grew 14% for both women and men, driving overall fragrance performance of 11% growth for women and 12% for men. Fragrance juices priced at a premium of $100 and above helped to propel growth for the category with unit gains of 45% versus a year ago, and fragrance launches were up 21% percent overall, driven by women’s launches, which grew by 33%. Celebrity brands, specifically women’s, were the winners in 2011 with gains of 57%".

In short, don't expect fragrance prices to lower any time soon; as long as people buy these things at those exorbitant prices, upstarts and more established players will continue to think that we're just buying an aspirational thing; even if it has to do with the aspiration of connoisseurship and snob appeal.

A brand that has released other fragrances in elaborate, niche, graphic designed packaging with claims of novel effects and dubfounding results, and which will remain unnamed for reasons of courtesy (the Poirot types amongst you will deduce with accuracy I'm sure), has released the most generic clean rose fragrance possible, only it doesn't even contain one trace of rose essence in it I'm sure. Not only the real thing in terms of absolute, attar, pomade or essential oil is missing entirely, a fairly trained nose can't detect more than just a screechingly synthetic freesia accord that stands for "floral" and that dreaded aqueous/green tea/empty air perfumer's base that passes as "clean" or "fresh" whenever you hear about fragrant releases for spring and summer wear. This "electrically-charged" rose is cropping up with an alarming frequency: I recall Givenchy issuing one for their Very Irresistible franchise, so who knows what else might include it in the not too distant future.

The fact that this brand has been sitting on a table display at some exhibition alongside Serge Lutens and By Kilian is probably an infuriating testament to the reality that you can claim anything and then get treated as such, even by professionals in the field! (Are those professionals so jaded they don't give a sniff anymore, just nod their heads and grant royal rights? Are they so anxious to please everyone they feature just about anything? Are they just paid to act how they act? Who knows.).

My senses aren't shocked by this random new release. My intellect is. Houston, we've got a problem.

painting Woman with Claws by Paul Outerbridge via tumblr

All that's Wrong with Perfume Nowadays

I've given collective thanks, done my small bit with a good cause charity, plan to donate stuff at my local shelter too and you might feel I'm all spic & span and feeling sanctimonious, don't you. Well, I have had a huge rant rising up in me, crazy-bitchy stuff that you like, and waited just till the season of thanks was semi-over to spill it over these pages for your collective head-nodding (or not; read on to find out and feel free to agree or disagree in the comments).

I was aimlessly browsing at Sephora the other day. A precarious walk amidst beauty bombs, it seems. From left to right and top to bottom there were tantalizing promises of a "younger, thinner, prettier you" in the form of spunky beauty tricksters, sparkling baubles and mascaras that promise to vibrate from here to eternity. Even a beauty editor can be taunted into submission, there's so much stuff out there. The perfume aisles at Sephora are of course decked with all the newest, the plastic wrappers almost warm to the touch off the conveyor belt at some far away factory in some exotic locale. And the best-sellers, naturally. I wasn't expecting to find niche stuff. But -in my country at least- they used to carry plenty of the dependable "mainstays"; indeed they continue to carry Chanel No.19 in Eau de Parfum (a brisk seller locally by all accounts), Aliage and White Linen by Lauder and Miss Dior and the rest of the classic Diors. Right?
Well, no. Strike that latter part out (thank you LVMH).

Not only have Sephora boutiques ditched the classic Dior selection they carried (I used to find everything from Dolce Vita to classic Poison to Dune to Diorissimo effortlessly, alongside bestselling J'Adore and Hypnotic Poison), they displayed prominently a bow-style bottle with salmon juice bearing the name Miss Dior! A double take (you can see the eyesore by yourself at left) and a percursory sniff later, I'm convinced my worst instincts weren't wrong: This is Miss Dior Chérie re-incarnated as simply....Miss Dior. Forget about the classic that kickstarted the Dior fragrance line at 1947. Forget all the history, the accolades, the dedicated following, the definition of gardenia-chypre with animalic tendencies. Young ones are condemned to read about Miss Dior in the future and think of this vile, character-less conconction (because yes, even Miss Dior Chérie has been reformulated to blandness!). What the heck, LVMH? You don't take your originator and bury it six feet under. The confusion to the consumer who was lured by the myth of Miss Dior and then hooked on the slutty girliness of the sweet strawberry-patchouli scent of Miss Dior Chérie was a low trick enough (Exploiting the past to sell the present). Talk about pinkification...

Supposedly this weird bottle is a limited edition, as if the Miss Dior Chérie line isn't confusing enough. (The Ukrainian-sounding sales assistant told me that Sephora has dropped the classic MD perfume, of which she was fully aware, off their catalogue, but other stores still carry it). Supposedly the original is going to be sold as Miss Dior L'Original in several stores. But colour me sceptical: This is pretty much the summation of everything that's wrong with Parfums Dior: not an incompetence of the perfumers team, but bad marketing and positioning decisions that in their lust for more profit, more exposure, more easy sales, lose their core values; intergrity, originality, sticking to one's guns.

I know for a fact that the classic Miss Dior sells adequatelly. I also know for a fact that although teenagers are not the demographic aimed at (much as it was the debutante scent of yore), they are not averse to it when given a chance to blind test it; I have personally sprayed the scarf of an unknown teenager girl when asked what I'm using at the ladies' room and though she found the initial blast "heavy"  (notice the vocabulary confusion when trying to describe scent; she meant bitter mossy) she very much liked the effect left on her scarf and carefully noted down the name. But in the end it doesn't matter. Even if the classic Miss Dior didn't sell more than 5 bottles a year at each respective store, a specimen should always be on display because it represents HISTORY. How many of the upstarts can claim that?

To add insult to injury, I have Snooki releasing her own fragrance and on top of that pondificating on perfume for our sakes via quotes and interviews. Snooki, yes, the one from Jersey Shore (if you're European like me, you probably need to check out what the hell this is), about whom I had been bombarded with in press-releases and informercials (what she's using, what she likes, what's her peeing schedule, as if we give a darn), who's going on record saying she only likes sweet stuff: "I don't like anything strong that smells like old ladies. That's why I'm going for the sweet because old ladies don't smell sweet." [from her interesting interview on Allure, which thankfully reveals the girl doesn't know nil shit about fragrance anyway]
Excuse me while I dribble kiwi suryp & smear cupcakes all over myself (as if!) in order to be presentable to the world as the paragon of youthful and alluring. Not.
I mean: kiwi & cupcakes; can you think of a grosser combination of fragrances?

No offence to the girl and you've got to admire perseverance into "making it" in show business, especially when your talons are long enough to make accomplish all those required "moves" rather problematic (if you catch my drift), but how can anyone take style advice from this paragon of elegance and graceful style?
So, in order to have one's say in such matters you have to put down on older women; that always works. No one questions the sagacity of wanting to appear/feel younger, because, well, everybody wants to. Right?

There in a nutshell: two totally unrelated incidents, one gigantic cultural zit turning to a painful boil. Someone needs to lance it, once and for all.

Photo on top by Marilyn Minter. Pic of snooki via hollywoodlife.com