Balenciaga's Nicolas Ghesquière talks about the new Balenciaga Paris fragrance. In French with English subtitles.
Update: this video has been removed from YouTube, sorry!
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I do like this ad campaign. Now I really want to smell this, as well.
I do too…it’s so simple & laid back.
I like the ad campaign and also the fragrance. It is not edgy but very nice for work–as is Prada L’Eau Ambree–not that they smell alike.
Yes, that’s a good comparison.
I’m not very tempted by the juice, but I also like the ad campaign very much!
The “still life” image is particularly beautiful and evocative, at least for me 🙂
But I wouldn’t have thought of it as a vanity, as OT does instead. where’s the element of decay?
BTW, the vanities I lust after are those from Codognato… too beautiful and too expensive.. and you don’t hang them on the wall but on your fingers, which is waaaay better 😉
I tried to give sublimal messages to my husband, but nada….
I just googled Codognato – beautiful!
Great stuff.
The only thing that disturbed me — and it bugs me a lot — is seeing Charlotte’s face near the end dissolving into the Photo-shopped image that appears in the ad. I had to go back and look at the transformation a couple of times to really appreciate how much her face was doctored. For all this emphasis on the beauty of the unique, even the bizarre, they took away all the distinctiveness of her features: the slight asymmetry, the slightly un-classic proportions, her unusual mouth and chin. In the ad, she looks like your basic boring ubiquitous model. Pity.
How interesting…I didn’t even notice, but yep. Anyone else who wants to see it, go to about the 4:55 mark.
OMG!!! You hit it on the nail there was just something about it that bugged me and I could not put my finger on it.But, that is it I mean I saw the ad and I was like no really sure slightly tempted.So I googled her and did a you tube search for her as well.She looks totally different from the ad.I perfer her unphoto shopped with all her imperfections that make her unique and beautiful.Its crazy they did the same thing to her sister in Calamity J ad looks totally different than what she really looks like.Bummer
Yes! So glad you’re with me on the “bummer” aspect of this. It just seems especially dishonest and hypocritical, given the tenor of the video.
Ghesquiere claims Miss Gainsbourg was chosen “for her oddity. . . and bizarre beauty,” and yet her face is promptly altered digitally. The real message is “Sure, we’ll give you quirky and unique — only we won’t really. We don’t actually believe that the woman we’ve chosen to represent our new fragrance is beautiful, imperfections and all, and we don’t think her atypical looks will move as many bottles as your standard cookie-cutter model type.”
Balenciaga had a chance to make women feel good about themselves — to look at the real Miss Gainsburg and celebrate their own unique beauty. Now they can envy yet another image of unattainable perfection. They may as well have chosen Heidi Montag. In fact, it would have been more truthful and less manipulative. Sad.
I feel strongly about this because I am auntie to several young women who are confused about mixed messages in the media and struggle with feeling attractive just as they are. I don’t think those of us born in the fifties and sixties really understand that particular pressure; the bar was set nowhere near as high when we were as young, insecure and impressionable.
This is a wonderful, perceptive comment, and it’s so true that photoshopping takes unattainable beauty to a whole new level. Nonetheless, I also I remember seeing the wonderful, quirky beauties of the 70s as just such a heartachingly unattainably high bar. Sigh!
Robin, I guess the thing I wish I had appreciated earlier in life is the importance of mastery – i.e., the practice it takes to learn something like Pilates or a language or to be a runner or a professional (somewhere I read that mastering anything takes 10,000 hours!). The real trap of marketing hype is that it makes you think that beauty or excellence is something that you buy from company X rather than something you develop through your own investment of time, attention and discipline.
I could not agree with you more.I read on another site that Jennifer Connoly was favored to be the spokeswoman for this fragrance.But, the perfumer I assume its the man in this video wanted Charlotte and would not do it without her.That could of been nice if they would of let her be herself and not get photo shopped like that.In the end they wanted her to have a crossover appeal.I think that is really sad they could of inspired women but they decided to go mainstream.Very sad.
It’s lovely, but what difference does the bleeping still life make, anyway? I want the unphotoshopped version of the scent!
It’s intriguing that a perfume blog draws more perceptive commenters than a lot of more “serious” fora…. I guess one of the reasons we’re here is because we aren’t satisfied with or fooled by the superficial.
Amen, I have learned so much from this site its truly amazing.I mean I really love the Kim Kardashian fragrance but about a month ago I bought the 3.4oz and now its almost gone.I would say by the end of the month this will be finished.It didn’t last long and its just too pricey considering how quick it went.LOL This is what I read about often that the quality in the fragrance in lots of celebrity fragrances is not a good quality.I mean some are like Lovely lasted for ages for me and was actually a very good value.But, yeah I am really learning about the superficial like the ads the scent all of that.I think I would rather pay more for quality instead so now I will certainly look elsewhere.This really has me thinking niche now I am sorry at least there are no ads and all this photoshopping stuff.