The previous days I made a small test to show you something the perfume is doing every day on shelves. I wrote in French several articles with enough errors to amuse any French lover and with a complicated style to make the Google translation quite difficult in English. All texts were perfectly coherent in their intention with enough subtle references to many perfumes, but no links, no clear names or houses. A small puzzle to amuse those who expect more than a press-release.
I used the "voice" of a famous beauty queen and the tone of the Gatsby era beauty ads (screened in Cannes last week) - you have all the references in my texts, they were repeated many times using the "codes" of the brand in a literary way. The title "La main songe" sounds strange in French unless you haven't been invited to the famous "Main Chance" spa where girls were dreaming about Beauty. A high price.
100 years ago all perfume companies played the French card while operating in Chicago or New York, presenting amazing illustrations in Vogue. There was nothing French in any "imported French perfume". Even the Hungarian Esther, born in Queens, put an é to her name. What is the essence of the French art? Maybe an accent.
It sounds French, but is not pure French (I don't care for any literary acclaim), much like the packaging of many perfumes which "impersonated" the Pompadour style 150 years later and made a fortune. It's plain paper with ink.
The style means the way you say something, the impression you give. In perfume, this style or "lost in translation" mixture is essential because it is highly creative. More you are bound to a culture or a language and its perfection, smaller the chances to evolve and create other things for a global
clientèle.
When I use "mysterious" clues the reason is again inspired by perfumes. You do not buy the bottle with a formula, you do not get the "plain truth" for free in a book. In the XIXth century, poetic names started to appear in Paris. When people got tired about "essence de jasmin", "esprit de rose" and many other names in a perfume catalog, perfumers had a fabulous idea.
Keep the perfume which sells, make a subtle modification, change the name into something poetic. "Esprit de jasmin" was given a new name, more enchanting, less "common". When you read something you do not really understand, the imagination goes wild with the perfume. Many fabulous bouquets received their names
après ... and not before the creation process. Hard to say which where born with an artistic intention. The same story goes again and again today. Just go and smell the new niche area. Take the perfume you love, invent an appropriate name and put a small post-it label on the bottle instead of the original label. Many perfumes are launched this way, "translating" the tastes of a global
clientèle in a new age. 50 years later, the "copy" becomes mythical because there is no trace of the original scent - the perfume evaporates.
What do you think an average consumer understands about the perfume? In an international market consumers get 1% of the message - they read, think, write in other languages than the author who sells a bottle. It sounds obvious, but when you sell 10 million bottles of each, things are rather different than a comment "we speak different languages". They read letters, not articles or books. They think with words.
With a perfume bottle, a name and a scent, you do not hope for any literary acclaim. You avoid it. The imagination of the consumer will do the job. Again, the perfume is read in all senses. You put the box near the mirror which mirrors the letters. Vanité stands for vanity case in my articles. Writing à la manière de in a foreign language means understanding how the invisible (the perfume, the scent, the flavor) is perceived and communicated. How something is decoded and encoded, which is crucial in perfume creation.
In the last article I used what French are specialist in - the verb "le près tendre" (I write it as a joke). I used several complicated references with enough grammar errors to make the distinction between the un-educated and the intellectual - that was crucial in Versailles before Marie Antoinette was beheaded. There were many French with titles (and money), but the distinction was given by the way they spoke and write.
"vous avez un petit accent"
With perfume, fashion and make-up people hide their origins and promote their ego - le miasme (a famous french book about odours). They hide they are not French, they are not from
une grande famille. That's one of the main reasons why people buy these amazing objects - les
nouveaux riches or the immigrants.
"Le grand amour pour la nouveauté d'un nez innocent doit être mis en garde dans l'Empyrée où se trouvent les Senteurs Celestes." How many modern readers were aware that I was speaking about 2 perfumes launched a century ago, one from Gueldy, the other from Rallet and the gossips about the private life of the famous person I was impersonating for a week?
Paris sells. With a Parisian address (actually a mailbox), a bottle made in China, a perfume concentrate bought from UK or a Swiss factory, the dream is ready to enchant a consumer through media where everything is "covered up". With a budget, you have "the ode to the perfumer" (the Narcissus myth) which generates more sales. There is no "accent" or "grammar mistake" to reveal the nature of a new business.
It's not "le mensonge", just the nice part of the story with nice smells. There is ART where you want to see / read ART.
The perfume is the dream, "c'est le Rêve", and it can be of many kinds - from social aspirations to intellectual aspirations (
je suis intello Rive Gauche) or even science (when complicated names are used hoping to reveal the truth inside). It is an aspiration which is portrayed in the very old and forgotten perfume called
Le rêve d'Elizabeth ARDEN whose real name gave the "bird" poetry inspiration in the previous article.
A perfume company is like a Babel tower. A girl from India is sent to Paris where she learns the art of perfumes. Then, she works in New York for a huge American giant with colleagues from many countries. A Canadian company sends a brief for a "french styled" brand which launches a perfume inspired by Italy intended for the Australian market. That's how industry works and perfumes are created with briefs, people, intentions or markets which are mixing all the languages, making intentional "mistakes" and mastering them.
The girl keeps her "indian" accent because that's what makes her special - she brings something very different, her culture in a company where the language is only a tool, not the goal.
Briefing and de-briefing. What I say in French can be the most stupid philosophy ... but I sell in a market with no Sorbonne the next door.
How many times do you read the same poem in your life time? The perfume box / bottle is read every morning you use it in all possible ways because you do not pay attention to "details". In all the languages you master or use.
Every morning, French drink their NAIVE water in the mirror of Narkiss.
The interpretation of a text, a picture, a name, a scent, an article has a value only when it is done within the right context:
"What does this brand mean in that country?" "How does it sound, write and read - lu dans tous les sens?"
Perfumes, cosmetics and fashion are the only real solution to all kind of discrimination in modern society - social, education, age, foreign origin etc. They serve, as a century ago, to combine the intimate dream with the necessary
mensonge in a community which is far from being the Beauty you see in all pictures. The perfume gives you wings, the jars in this old picture had several small golden wings.
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Fragrance is the 8th Art - Octavian Coifan - Le Parfum est le 8ème Art
