BBC Perfume Documentaries - Part 1

"Something old, something new"


Part one of the BBC's perfume documentaries explored Famous french perfumer Paul Guerlain as they followed his journey of creating a perfume using his old school and very personable methods and marketing approach to creating a perfume. Guerlain's philosophy for his consumer was to "Get them young, keep them for life" to which he explained that he believes the brand to be very family orientated within its target consumer, as a mother introduces their offspring into the perfume world with Guerlain and his outlook that "perfume should be seen as a fashion item..something to be changed regularly". Guerlain was transfixed on the way in which a perfume represented a woman and how she wanted to be portrayed "take off her dress, whats left? Her charm and perfume".

This juxtaposed that of the opposing perfumer Varelique who worked for Tommy Hilfiger in the creation of their multi-sexual perfume "Loud". Varelique explained how she wanted the fragrance to represent "liquid rock and roll" by mixing both music and fragrance together to adapt to a younger generation of consumers. The creation of Loud was very clever with the way in which they linked the scent and title of the perfume together; The paper strips to which are usually used for consumers to test a perfume in store where in this case formed into a music ticket to match the vibrant movement of the bottle of the perfume and the ragged guitar like top to the bottle. Varelique believed that the bottle had to represent an invisible scent to which the bottle must sell the fragrance before he consumer smells the fragrance, she believed that design and advertising was key to achieve an admirable fragrance that people will continuously invest in. Valerique invested in the band The Ting Ting's as well as famous UK model Daisy Lowe to be the ambassadors for the brand as she felt that their rock and roll aristocracy made the perfume more relatable to a younger clientele.


Overall the documentary was extremely interested as it allowed you to get a feel for the fragrance market from two different sides of the spectrum; Paul Guerlain believed that no expense should be spared in the creation of a perfume, precision is key within his old world perfume to which included both ingredients from nature and the famous "Guerlainard" to which is presented as the DNA behind Guerlain that has been a key element of all of Guerlain's perfumes from the start. This differentiates to that of Tommy Hilfiger's process of the creation of "Loud" to which saw it being heavily advertised with the help of famous faces and clever bottling of the perfume to help reel in the target consumer with its interlinked ad campaigns and packaging to which I feel almost forces the consumer to believe that what they are smelling is "rock and roll" due to the way in which it has been sold to them.