02.01.06
Spectacular Scent-sations
2005 was the year of celebrity scents and the biggest trend in fragrance packaging was the use of dazzling color.
By Joanna Cosgrove
Alexander McQueen’s MyQueen is evocative of a Fabergé egg. |
Celebrities who forayed into fragrances range from actors like Sarah Jessica Parker and Antonio Banderas; musicians like Shania Twain, Carlos Santana and Sean “Diddy” Combs; models like Cindy Crawford and Niki Taylor, and athletes like tennis phenom Maria Sharapova and soccer ace David Beckham. Even celebutante Paris Hilton made her mark in the fragrance business, while songstresses Britney Spears, Jennifer Lopez and Celine Dion added new scents to their existing fragrance repertoires.
The aforementioned list of celebrities is diverse, but a unifying thread is their use of innovative packaging designs. “The use of decoration has played a very important part of this year’s launches,” comments Robert DuGrenier of Robert DuGrenier & Associates, located in Townsend, VT. “With new decorating techniques, it has created some interesting stock packaging and custom packaging.”
DuGrenier spotlights Britney Spears’ fantasy fragrance as a package that uses color and gems to glitz up a traditional round bottle. The bottle was supplied and decorated by Heinz Glas USA Inc., Linden, NJ. Doug Thompson, the company’s chief commercial officer, says fantasy — which sports a total-body pearlized fuchsia colored packaging — is a great example of the fragrance industry’s current penchant for surface treatments. “Organic spraying (in some vibrant and interesting colors) continues to be a strong trend in surface treatments of glass bottles,” he says. “The Britney Spears fantasy bottle [also] has a multitude of glass diamonds glued to the surface of the bottle.”
Celebrity Fragrances
The saying “any press is good press” might be a motivator behind celebrities who lend their persona to a fragrance, but not every celebrity enters into a namesake fragrance venture lightly. Sarah Jessica Parker was reportedly very involved in many aspects of her successful fragrance, Lovely, in order to ensure that the fragrance was accurately representative of her personality.
“All celebrities have created an image in their life and work [and] with the entrance into the fragrance category the image must be carried over to make the lines successful,” says DuGrenier, who has personally worked to create fragrances in collaboration with celebrities like Susan Lucci. “It is important to achieve their image through the fragrance packaging. This has always been essential when we are creating a collection for a celebrity and is not an afterthought.”
Just as Britney Spears called upon her favorite colors and scents to create her fragrances, Paris Hilton invoked her favorite color, pink, for the packaging of her Just Me by Paris Hilton scent. The eau de parfum spray bottle is deep pink at its base, graduating to clear at its top. According to Parlux Fragrances the tall, columnar bottle captures “the slender silhouette of the heiress herself.”
Cindy Crawford’s Waterfalls uses turquoise. |
The bottle features a gradually lightened cloud of turquoise which contrasts with the subtle pink hue of the fragrance. The folding box depicts a cascade of turquoise water, studded with pink blossoms.
Sean “Diddy” Combs was inspired by the quote “Life without passion is unforgivable” when he helped develop a signature scent for his company, Sean John Fragrances. The result was Unforgivable (due to launch in February 2006) and the packaging reflects nuances of Sean Combs’ favorite things: Ferraris, yachts, planes and his homes around the world. The bottle is an architectural mix of classic and contemporary elements, and the logo and cap are displayed in elegant rose gold. The lower portion of the bottle is encased in a sleek smoked grey Lucite boot.
DuGrenier says this use of custom componentry was a trend last year. “It seems to me the inspirations have come from the art glass sculptures which are being shown in art galleries,” he says. “The Sean John Unforgivable used a concept that had a bottle inside an outer clear cast solid base which appeared to be part of the bottle. This look is very reminiscent of Tom Patti’s art glass sculptures that are very sought after.
“Another line which seems to have taken inspiration for the art glass world is Live by Jennifer Lopez — a bottle which appears to have been hand blow rather than mass produced.”
Looking ahead, all signs point to the celebrity scent trend continuing. Last fall, Elizabeth Arden inked fragrance licensing deals with teen actress Hilary Duff and romance novelist Danielle Steel. Both fragrance lines are projected to debut in Fall 2006.
Glorious Color
The lavish use of color wasn’t limited to celebrity fragrances. Many fragrances launched last year feature accents of vivid color. One of the best examples is Bond No. 9’s latest fragrance, Bleecker Street.
Created to epitomize New York’s Bleecker Street, the scent’s flacon is a merging of art and fashion, reflecting the neighborhood’s legacy as a home to artists. The company tapped Rachel Katz, a watercolor artist and fashion designer, to conceive a concept for the bottle design. She cloaked the bottle in a hand-painted dress-fabric design of intersecting arches that are outsize echoes of the gold filigree found on the New York City token. The bottle is splashed with magenta, red, green and chartreuse.
The world of fashion plays a huge role in the creation of new fragrances. Because only a small portion of consumers can actually afford designer apparel, fashion designers have long used fragrances to extend their brand name into all facets of consumer strata. In 2005, many renowned designers parlayed their creative visions into new scents, but the following raised the packaging bar through the use of color and custom touches.
Christian Dior has long been associated with luxury. Since 1947, the company has produced many incarnations of its signature fragrance Miss Dior, but last year’s launch of Miss Dior Cherie, dubbed an “absolute couture fragrance,” was inspired by the heritage of Miss Dior with a modern twist. This latest version features design elements that reinterpret vintage Dior codes, including the inscribed hounds-tooth decoration, the metal couture bow and the architectural shape of the bottle. A “timeless expression of the ‘Esprit de Dior,’” Miss Dior Cherie reinvents a classic scent for the next generation, appealing to both the chic and youthful.
Lalique puts a modern twist on a favorite classic. |
The bottle housing Calvin Klein’s latest fragrance, Euphoria, is an innovative combination of metal and glass exuding a polished, organic quality. Designed by Fabien Baron in conjunction with Calvin Klein, the company says the bottle resembles “an orchid about to bloom,” and is a sleek amalgam of aluminum and glass. The brilliant amethyst hue of the fragrance is visible through a curve of clear glass, which is encased in a sleek aluminum molded shell.
The bottle, which was produced by Heinz Glass, Germany, is topped with a signature, rectangular silver cap and comes housed in a matte satin cassis outer carton. Jackel Cosmetics Limited, China, supplied the aluminum shell and provided the application of the shell to the glass.
Violet proved to be a popular color for Thierry Mugler’s latest fragrance, Alien. The dazzling bottle, produced by Verrieres Brosse, France, resembles a faceted amethyst. Pale gold “claws” charge the bottle with a natural energy. Alcan Packaging Beauty produced the spray cap and base. The Alien name, engraved on the glass in what can only be defined as an otherworldly signature, is reflected in reverse to form a sign as it would in a mirror. The name is additionally echoed on the underside of the bottle.
Alexander McQueen was also drawn to the color purple when he created the bottle for MyQueen. Inspired by a passion for traditional crystal glass making in the Art Nouveau style, McQueen enlisted the aid of crystal designer, Thomas Bastide, who had an extensive reference in glass making but none in fragrance bottles. McQueen began with his favorite shape, the egg, and then re-worked it in his own style, combining curves and stretched lines in the image of his creations. The result is a dazzlingly faceted bottle reminiscent of a precious Fabergé egg.
The juice for Stella Cadente, a new fragrance by European designer Stanislassia Klein for the Clarins Fragrance Group, took a lilac colored hue to represent “universal color, lightness and femininity.” Italian for “shooting star,” Stella Cadente is contained in a dress-shaped bottle of lilac glass with shifted side profiles evocative of Klein’s layered silk and tulle dresses. It is crowned with a bejeweled cap of gems created with a precision mold. A tri-injection process is used to produce each of the cap’s three distinctive colors. Additionally, each bottle carries a lucky charm, a symbol of protection, draped around its neck that can be removed and worn by the user.
Simplicity at its Finest
Uncluttered minimalism is a subtle trademark of luxury. Such is the case with Georgio Armani’s latest fragrance family, Armani Prive, an exceedingly personal creation born out of the desire to make a limited edition collection of scents for himself and his friends. To create the fragrance set, Armani journeyed back to the manner in which fragrances were made in the past, personally working with perfumers to find fragrances he liked, without assigning a distinction of sex. He set no budgetary limits on the cost of raw materials and endeavored to work in a pure way, with only a few high quality ingredients. The result of his endeavor was four singular fragrances: Eau de Jade, Pierre de Lune, Ambre Soie and Bois d’Encens.
To house the four fragrances, the famed designer chose bottles that expressed a combination of art and nature, resulting in a concept that conveys, “the artistry of man, working with what nature has given us.”
The Armani Privé bottle, made from dark, heavy African Kotibe wood, was inspired by a Brancusi sculpture and has an immediate sculptural artifact quality.
“I had the idea to distinguish between the fragrances by using caps which were reminiscent of polished pebble-like stones: jade, moonstone, amber and the black Pantelleria,” Armani says. “The four stones chosen perfectly express the characters of the fragrances they are guarding: an eau de cologne for Eau de Jade, a floral for Pierre de Lune, an oriental for Ambre Soie and a spice for Bois d’Encens.”
Lalique has long been synonymous with timeless sophistication. Late last year, the renowned crystal company launched its signature Lalique le Parfum in yet another collectible crystal work of art.
The Eau de Parfum is housed in a simple but substantial crystal cube adorned with a red braid. The bottle is elegantly capped with a clear square cabochon engraved with the “Masque De Femme” motif, which was originally created by Rene Lalique in 1935.
The Perfume Crystal Extract features a detailed, sculpted façade with a black braid encircling the bottle neck. Both versions of the fragrance are presented in a black and red square Lacquerware box.
