Barbara Herman, author of Scent & Subversion: Decoding a Century of Provocative Perfume, talks to NPR's All Things Considered about vintage fragrances:
Blogger Barbara Herman has spent the better part of the past six years taking a deep nosedive into the world of vintage fragrances. Her quest? To find the bold, the sexy and the downright odd smells that have defined women over the decades.
The segment is a little over 5 minutes long.
Ralph Lauren will launch Midnight Romance, a new floriental fragrance for women, in April. Midnight Romance is a flanker to 1998’s Romance; the brand is calling it Romance’s “sexy sister” although the juice apparently is not related. Midnight Romance will be fronted by model Anna Selezneva…
Bvlgari Parfums managing director Valeria Manini said Bvlgari’s new men’s fragrance, Aqva Amara,1 a flanker to 2005’s Aqva Pour Homme, was:
…part of a larger strategy to promote the best-selling Aqva and Omnia lines as high-end creations “developed for a larger audience…. We are working very hard to try to elevate what are considered the ‘entry’ product lines. There are two possible approaches here: either you treat the fragrance as a big commercial blockbuster, or you say, no, we want to treat this like a very precious object.”2
The trouble with this strategy, when it comes to the Aqva line at least, is that the perfumes don’t smell “high-end.” Original Aqva Pour Homme has its moments, but it smells more like a blockbuster wannabe than an expensive niche creation…
Of all the things that stood out at Prabal Gurung’s show last year - the clear plastic curtain, the satiny pencil skirts, the mannequinlike models - fashion editors still recall the one thing they could not see: the smell. The runway show, which took place at the Skylight at Moynihan Station, was scented with a syrupy sweet perfume, which had some in the front row holding their noses.
— A rundown on the scented runways of Fashion Week, at the New York Times: A Generous Spritz to Set the Mood.
