How much does a perfume’s back story matter to you? It has long been an axiom in the fragrance industry that the back story is key to commercial success. Along with the other design elements — the packaging, the advertising, etc — it ought to help attract the appropriate consumer audience, and to allow the customer to make an emotional connection with the fragrance and the brand. When it works, it works, when it doesn’t…well, that’s essentially why we do the Prix Eau Faux, right? And why young people everywhere rolled their eyes at Calvin Klein In2U (to name just one egregious misfire) before they even smelled it.
I was thinking of all this when I first smelled the latest from Annick Goutal, the unisex fragrance Nuit Étoilée. The name makes reference to Van Gogh’s masterpiece, and the brand’s press materials mention a “dream world” and a solitary communion with nature…
