In Closing: Inspired by the Beach
Amber sea glass, a conch shell, and Hawaiian wedding bands influenced the design of these fragrance packages.
By Marie Redding, Senior EditorThe luxurious tropical style of the clothing, accessories, and home furnishings of the Tommy Bahama brand has been extended to fragrances. The Tommy Bahama men’s and women’s fragrances are the first launch by Gemini Cosmetics. Gemini Cosmetics was founded in 2004 by industry veterans Neil Katz and Robert Rumsby, both formerly of Liz Claiborne Cosmetics. Package designer Dale Brandon Kan, owner and creative director of Brandonology, used the Caribbean as the inspiration for the bottles, which are meant to be glamorous with a retro feel.
The luxurious tropical style of the clothing, accessories, and home furnishings of the Tommy Bahama brand has been extended to fragrances. The Tommy Bahama men’s and women’s fragrances are the first launch by Gemini Cosmetics. Gemini Cosmetics was founded in 2004 by industry veterans Neil Katz and Robert Rumsby, both formerly of Liz Claiborne Cosmetics. Package designer Dale Brandon Kan, owner and creative director of Brandonology, used the Caribbean as the inspiration for the bottles, which are meant to be glamorous with a retro feel.
“We wanted the women’s bottle to be elegant and reminiscent of the sea. For the men’s bottle, we looked back to the style popular in Cuba during the 1950s, when men all wore jackets and smoked cigars,” says Katz.
Natural looks were simulated on the glass bottles by Pochet of America (Wayne, NJ). The women’s bottle exudes the polished glow of the inside of a conch shell. It has a pearlescent finish with warm pink, gold, and amber tones, shining differently depending on the angle of the light. The decoration was done using a hot-end process during molding.
The men’s bottle has the weathered look of amber sea glass, and it even has bubbles inside. The glass used for the men’s bottle was colored an amber shade, pushing the limits of what can be achieved in this color using a feeder process. The bubbles were created inside the glass using a patented technique developed by Pochet. “Combining these two processes was quite a manufacturing achievement for us,” says Lynda Bolnick, sales manager, Pochet. “The bubbles can only appear on the inside of the glass, not on the surface or near the neck finish. Control of the size of the bubbles is very limited, and the amount and where they fall varies, making each bottle unique.”
The men’s Surlyn cap, supplied and decorated by Crown Risdon (Watertown, CT), resembles wood. To achieve this look, Crown Risdon used an innovative decorating technique for the first time called hydrographics. This technique was developed by Immersion Graphics Corp., under its trademark Final Finish. The wood pattern is printed on a film and floated on top of a clear water surface in a custom-designed immersion tank. A special chemical is used to dissolve the film, leaving just the image floating on the water’s surface. The design uniformly clings to the cap immersed in the tank. The cap is dried, then given a protective lacquer coat. “It took several months to achieve the exact look we wanted on the cap,” says Katz. “Crown Risdon was able to make this process affordable,” he says.
The collars on both bottles were modeled after Hawaiian wedding bands. “This adds a romantic aspect to the design,” explains Katz. The men’s aluminum “ring” has an antiqued anodized bronze finish, and the women’s is anodized gold.