Elle Fanning for Paco Rabanne Fame.
A lavender scent wafts through the air
At Vitamin Shoppe, a lavender scent wafts through the air. Stores use air diffusers to pump out lavender essential oils, the company's top-selling essential oil that promotes "calm and relaxation," said a spokesperson. During the holidays, stores switch to a peppermint essential oil.
— Read more in How Abercrombie, Victoria's Secret and Vitamin Shoppe use smell to get you to spend more at CNN.
Crowded
Breaking into the fragrance industry from the outside was basically impossible. No one’s looking to explain anything to you. It’s very European. It’s dominated by people who have trained in fragrance, so it’s hard to emulate another [brand]. A brand of our scale or our type didn’t exist that much [when we started]. I’m not saying it didn’t exist at all, but we were one of the first small-scale perfumers to do everything on our own. We knew [we had] something special there to start with. It wasn’t the most saturated market when we started nearly 14 years ago. It was different then. It’d be a lot harder today [to launch an indie fragrance brand]. Every facet of the beauty industry is more crowded today than it was 14 years ago.
— Kavi Moltz, quoted in D.S. & Durga founders on building their business: ‘There are no rules’ at Glossy.
A more holistic vision of the history
“Since antiquity, humans transformed walls, stones and also plants to survive. So, in this laboratory, I wanted to show that to give a more holistic vision of the history—which is nature and chemistry—and everything is in everything.” [Mathilde] Laurent’s poetic, artistic vision celebrates not just the perfume as product, but the actual art of making it as well. “I would say cooking is the neighbor of perfumery. Mixology is the neighbor of perfumery. Gardening is the neighbor of perfumery. And I wanted all these neighborhoods to be present in the laboratory,” she explains.
— Cartier perfumer Mathilde Laurent on her new laboratory in Paris. Read more in Cartier's Mathilde Laurent Is Redefining The Art Of Perfumery at Gotham.
Lights out
The spot for the new Parfum concentration of Tom Ford Noir Extreme.