Tag Archives: perfume

The Art of Perfume Advertising: Estee Lauder Modern Muse, Isaac Mizrahi Fabulous, and the Guggenheim

11 Monday Mar 2019

Posted by in Advertising and Scent

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One of the major mainstream fragrance releases for autumn 2013 was Estée Lauder’s Modern Muse, with the tagline “Be An Inspiration” and an advertising campaign featuring the model Arizona Muse.

In the initial advertising for this fragrance, Muse (the person, with the perfume!) made an appearance at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York.

In the print ads, including the one above, she poses inside the Guggenheim, which is immediately identifiable by its spiral ramp and its circular skylight…

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5 Fragrance Moments from Karl Lagerfeld

25 Monday Feb 2019

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Lagerfeld in 1985, with a bottle of KL fragrance.

Karl Lagerfeld died last week, on February 19, 2019, at the age of 85. Lagerfeld was probably one of the first fashion designers I knew by name, thanks to the prominent ads for Chloé that appeared in my mother’s copies of W magazine—favorite reading material for pre-teen me.

There are plenty of obituaries and features that give a comprehensive overview of his life and work. This post, however, is just a look at five perfume-related moments of his career…

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A Lenthéric Love Letter for Valentine’s Day

14 Thursday Feb 2019

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This advertisement was published in The Daily Messenger (Canandaigua, New York) on February 2, 1950.  “So very much more than just a card for your Valentine” — the house of Lenthéric was offering minis of two best-selling fragrances, Tweed and Repartée, in lacy greeting-card presentations. So sweet.

Wishing you a happy Valentine’s Day, however you choose to celebrate it!

Quick Hello and a Sneak Peek…

13 Wednesday Feb 2019

Posted by in Perfume Reviews

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The past week has been particularly busy at work and beyond, but I’ve still had perfume on my mind. Here’s a sneak peek at the newest fragrance from Anna Sui, which I sniffed last night at the designer’s boutique in SoHo. It’s called Fantasia Mermaid and it’s a follow-up to 2017’s Fantasia, with a similar bottle topped by a mermaid. (Fantasia’s cap featured a golden unicorn.) I sampled a quick spritz during my visit and my initial impression was that Mermaid is very different from its older “sister.”…

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“Frida Kahlo: A Perfumed Portrait” at the Brooklyn Museum, April 4, 2019 [sold out]

24 Thursday Jan 2019

Posted by in Classes and Lectures

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I’m working on approximately eleventy-six different things right now, but this is one of the most exciting. I’ll be giving a presentation about Frida Kahlo’s favorite fragrances (really! scents she actually owned and wore, as evidenced by the perfume bottles in her house!) followed by a tour of the exhibition Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving at the Brooklyn Museum on April 4, 2019.

If you’d like to learn more about this event, please visit the Museum’s event page, here. (It’s a ticketed event.)

Many thanks to the coworkers who have helped to make this idea a reality!

UPDATE: This event filled up quickly! I’m hoping to be able to offer a second date. If so, I’ll announce it here.

UP-UPDATE: The second date, on April 18, filled up VERY quickly. It’s exciting to know that people are so interested in Kahlo *and* fragrance…! 

Image: Nickolas Muray, Frida Kahlo with Olmec Figurine, 1939.

Screen Time: Perfume in Agatha Christie’s “Evil Under the Sun” (1981)

29 Thursday Nov 2018

Posted by in Perfume Reviews, Uncategorized

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Maybe I’m just in a nostalgic mood these days—then again, when am I NOT in a nostalgic mood? A few weeks ago I wrote a short post about Brideshead Revisited and its wine-tasting scene. Now I’m thinking about the film adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Evil Under the Sun.

Christie’s murdery-mystery novel Evil Under the Sun was published in 1941 and this film was released in 1981. It was directed by Guy Hamilton, with a screenplay by Anthony Shaffer, who also wrote two other Christie screen adaptations,  Murder on the Orient Express (1974) and Death on the Nile (1978). Peter Ustinov played Hercule Poirot, the Belgian detective who (as always) cracks the case.

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Ormaie’s Fragrance Innovations (in the NY Times): Oh Really?

19 Monday Nov 2018

Posted by in Oh Really

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Flipping through the Sunday New York Times, I came across a short profile of Marie-Lise Jonak and Baptiste Bouygues, the mother-and-son team behind the new perfume brand Ormaie. The full article is available online, as “Brand to Know: A Line of All-Natural Perfumes, Made by a Mother and Son.”

For me, the packaging is the most interesting aspect of Ormaie’s story—see the photo above! The bottles and labels are classic French elegance, while the beechwood tops are fun nods to the work of Ettore Sottsass and other postmodern designers.

However, the Times (especially in the print version) focused on topic of all-natural perfumery…

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