Perfume Documentary Part 1

Over the course of my two week reading week - we were asked to watch the BBC Four documentary on perfume to prepare for our next module. 

'Something Old, Something New'

Perfume is a multi billion dollar industry where the marketing of the product is just as important as the smell. 

The programme starts in Paris in the House of Guerlain. Guerlain sell grand perfumes which are made from ancient perfumes. The director at the time was Jean Paul Guerlain and his family had made fragrances for 183 years. The Guerlain brand have a tiny share of the world's fragrance market. Guerlain, release on french mothers with a sense of tradition who bring in their daughters to the town house store. The camera's follow a twelve year old girl and her mother as she gets her first Guerlain fragrance. The store say that "get them young and they will stay."

The House of Guerlain have old school promotional methods by inviting female journalists to the Guerlain chateau and introduce new fragrances then. Jean Paul Guerlain was asked whether he likes the big fashion houses making accessible fragrances ... he replied that he hated it. He does not like marketing in general. 

We were then introduced to the new successor of Guerlain; who is outside of the Guerlain family, Thierry Wasser who then took over the company. 

During the episode we were also taken to New York to witness the process of how the new Tommy Hilfiger 'Loud' fragrance which was targeted at the 18-25 year old age group, which was a huge success when launched. Dominant fashion labels like Tommy Hilfiger have made perfume into a fashion item. However, the sales technique for new fragrances is becoming more difficult. 

The New York Times noticed the new found hype of fragrances so have a Fragrance Connoisseur write a column for them. Nowadays, no one becomes attached to a fragrance anymore because fragrances are released more regularly now then before. Fifteen years ago, there would have been a lot less perfume launches. There were around 150 perfume launches a year but in 2011 there were twelve hundred fragrance launches. 

This is just a sum up of the first episode which I highly recommend watching on Youtube. A summary of episode 2 will be up tomorrow!

Soraya x

Photo Credits: http://honestlywtf.com/art/the-lust-list/

Tommy Hilfiger and Guerlain