Fragrance Bottles: Staying Afloat with Design
A gold metal plate lends some bling to Victoria’s Secret’s Supermodel fragrance bottle.
In a flagging fragrance market, the industry fights back with bottle designs.
By Dorothy Spencer and Jennifer Kwok, Senior EditorIt’s no secret that the fragrance industry has been struggling a little recently. The NPD Group reported that last year, sales of luxury fragrances in the United States shrank by 1%, down to $2.94 billion. Although luxury fragrances still sell more than luxury skin care products (but less than luxury makeup), it was still the only luxe category to see shrinkage. By contrast, sales of luxury makeup and skin care items each rose by 4% during the same time period. Between a sluggish market and a looming recession, things aren’t exactly coming up roses for the fragrance industry.
Despite the numbers, many fragrance packaging insiders say that they haven’t felt the pinch very hard and that package designs have not been greatly affected—yet. Denis Boudard, founder and president of package design firm QSLD (New York City), points out that although fewer fragrances have launched this year, the slumping economy has not had an impact yet on the package designs his customers demand. “We will not see the real impact of the economy on packaging design until 12 to 18 months from now, when products developed during this time hit the market,” he predicts. “Products that are being launched this summer and fall were in development more than one-and-a-half years ago.”
An Entourage of Fragrances
Celebrity-endorsed fragrances are one category still going strong in the industry. Sheherazade Chamlou, vice president of marketing for bottle supplier Saint-Gobain Desjonquères North America (SGD; New York City), says, “I believe that the high demand for celebrity products is keeping the fragrance industry afloat. The consumer has such a voracious appetite for the new, and the number of celebrity launches continues to grow.” Celebrity scents help to draw younger shoppers in as well.
Many brands are jumping on the celebrity bandwagon, demanding custom designs and manufacturing to go along with star-endorsement power. Last year, Avon launched a fragrance with actress Reese Witherspoon, and this spring, the company also launched a fragrance endorsed by MTV reality-television star Lauren Conrad. This fall, Gemma Arterton, who plays Agent Fields in the next James Bond film, will promote Avon’s Bond Girl 007 fragrance. Male celebrities are not excluded. In July, Patrick Dempsey of the hit TV drama “Grey’s Anatomy” celebrated his first fragrance with Avon, Unscripted. Unscripted’s streamlined, sharp-cornered, high-quality custom glass bottle, decorated with one-pass silk-screening on the front, was manufactured by Bormioli Luigi (Horsham, PA).
Accessorizing Bottles
Fashion brands also continue to launch fragrances. InterParfum recently signed an exclusive agreement with BEBE clothing stores. Their first fragrance is due to launch next year in an SGD custom bottle.
Accessories, charms, and glued-on plates are appearing on numerous custom bottles, with the accent on multiple decoration techniques to personalize bottles even more. A gold metal plate was glued onto the flint-glass bottle for Victoria’s Secret’s Supermodel fragrance. The bottle was sprayed with an opalescent sheen using a thermoluster vaporization process. SGD also created a custom glass bottle for an IZOD fragrance that features a metal plate glued to the bottle’s neck.
Large black
aluminum plates were UV-cured to the Calvin Klein Man fragrance bottle.
The Calvin Klein Man fragrance bottle sports black aluminum plates, which were UV-cured to the bottle’s glass walls. Heinz Glas (Linden, NJ) and SGD supplied the glass bottles. Northern Engraving (Green Bay, WI) and Qualipac (Wayne, NJ) produced the aluminum plates.
Instead of metal plates, Carolina Herrera’s 212 fragrance bottle is adorned with silver charms, which are affixed to the bottle’s neck. Fabien Baron designed the custom bottle.
Jewelry designer David Yurman’s namesake fragrance reflects another trend still going strong for giving bottles a custom look—the use of colored glass. The customized Italian crystal bottle was especially difficult to create, according to Olga Bursac of Bormioli Luigi, the bottle’s supplier. The gold color of the bottle was particularly challenging to achieve, as were the bottle’s numerous facets, which resemble gemstone cuts. The bottle’s design was a collaboration between Yurman and David Lipman of the Lipman Agency.
Other brands using colored glass include Gucci, which chose amber glass for its Gucci fragrance, and Midnight Poison, which features blue glass. John Varvatos’s Vintage bottle is a reinterpretation of an original bottle design but has amber-colored glass, a sleek leather python-like band, and a rose-champagne-colored cap.
Will Customized Bottles Save the Day?
Besides a slowing economy, fragrance brands face another challenge—the massive numbers of fragrances still launching each year. For brands that may struggle to entice consumers to purchase a luxury product such as a perfume or cologne, they also face the additional challenge of trying to stand out from the competition. Sometimes they even have to fight to stand out from their own launches from the previous year.
Although it’s been noted that the number of fragrance launches are now down slightly, the trend for customized packaging is up. Boudard predicts that luxurious custom designs will become all the more important in order to vie for customer attention. He believes that it is crucial for a brand to debut a product through custom packaging in order to grab the greatest amount of attention in the shortest amount of time. “In an already overcrowded market, individuality and customization make a product stand out,” he says.
Rochelle Bloom, president of The Fragrance Foundation, agrees. “The distinctiveness in this industry centers around the idea that you can own an object of art, one that is stimulating both visually as well as sensually—without it costing a small fortune,” she says. “Perfume bottles, especially the high-end designs, are extraordinarily great collectibles. One bottle that comes to mind is John Galliano’s DNA bottle, which exemplifies luxury packaging that really hits all of the high notes in custom glass.”
Another remarkable bottle is Féerie from Van Cleef & Arpels, which launched in August. The bottle features a tall Zamac sculpture of a fairy on a branch. The bottle was inspired by Van Cleef & Arpels’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream jewelry collection, which is sold exclusively at Neiman Marcus. The bottle was designed by Joel Desgrippes and manufactured by Bormioli Luigi.
Bloom also notes that as packaging production becomes more expensive in a tough economy, stock bottles are also a good option. She says that today, there are some very custom-looking stock bottles that, with even the smallest custom piece, such as a custom cap, can be made to look luxurious and one of a kind. “I know many people who use stock bottles today,” she says. “I think the whole idea of stock bottles is so sophisticated. There are so many options.”
What with the trend for flankers (bottles that are not a new mold but that have been decorated differently for a new edition of a fragrance), designers may also have to get more creative in order to attract customers. “The challenge is to invoke a new image for each new flanker,” says package designer Marc Rosen. “You have to create something, through decoration, that is going to stand out. It’s harder, especially when you get into the third, fourth, fifth flanker. It’s less original.”
Escada’s new S fragrance bottle represents a new aesthetic direction for the brand.
QSLD’s latest fragrance bottle design for S by Escada was part of a branding exercise that aimed to increase awareness of Escada’s high-end clothing range by adding an eighth fragrance to the brand’s already existing fragrances for men and women. “It was clear that the S fragrance would be a step towards changing the scope of Escada initiatives in the future,” say Boudard.
Taking this as a design cue, QSLD’s team came up with a sculpted custom glass bottle that features vibrant colors encapsulated in a tall bottle with clean lines and a brushed-aluminum closure. The entire back of the bottle is curved and was embossed with red dots.
Often, speed to market has been the reason why so many fragrance brands have come to rely on flankers. Bloom, for one, feels that the industry should reduce the number of fragrances it introduces each year, take the time to develop a fragrance and a package that are truly special and unique, and then take the time to nurture and raise a fragrance for longer shelf-life expectancy. Bormioli Luigi’s Bursac agrees. “That kind of nurturing and longevity of fragrance products is already a standard in Europe,” she says.
Experts dedicated to fragrance and design make it clear that the ultimate goal of bottle artistry is to entice customers to pick up a fragrance and make a purchase. The bottle serves as the silent salesman, achieving its task through a design that supports the brand message. While glass packaging is currently facing a challenging economy, exciting trends in consumer behavior and custom design promise a bright future.
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