Perfume Documentaries

The past two weeks have been reading week for Fashion Communication and Promotion. We were given 4 books to read and some required watching. One of these is a BBC documentary on perfume split into 4 episodes.

1   Something Old Something New

2  Bottling the Memory

3  The Smell of the Future

4  Part 4 (Link cannot be found)

I feel personally that the documentary was quite hard for me to watch and keep interested in what they were saying because it was quite slow but I did learn some key facts:

•   Guerlain’s idea: get them young to keep them

•   Mothers Day: key day in perfume sales

•   60% of business is made in the last quarter of the year

•   In 2011 there were 1200 perfume launches

•   The biggest selling tool is the bottle

•   Perfume has about a years life to ‘make it’ if it doesn’t sell after this time then it moves to supermarkets and lower end department stores.

•   Smells have colour and texture e.g smooth or rough, a spicy scent connotes red

•   Givaudan is the worlds largest and leading fragrance and scent company

•   Givaudan have a perfumery school called “the school of noses” which picks the best of the best to learn about perfume and work on jobs. If they graduate they have jobs lined up for them within the company. They are so picky sometimes the school has no students.

•   What we like in a smell is determined by culture and environment

•   Russians = rich and heavy

•   Chinese = light and airy

•   British = fruity

•   Arabian =musky

•   Musk was also popular in victorian England

•   Brazilians = fruity and floral

•   Brazil is the fastest growing fragrance market in the world

Innovation

Overall, I feel knowing some of these facts will help me in my next project when I am producing research material.