Our own Dr. Jessica will be giving a talk next month for the Brooklyn Brainery — 10 Iconic Perfume Bottles: Culture and Design…
Friday scent of the day 5/8
Welcome to Bottle Porn Friday! Our community project for today: wear something you bought in part or in full because of the bottle, or a fragrance you think has a beautiful (or otherwise perfect) bottle.
As always, do chime in with your scent of the day even if you’re not participating in the community project.
I’m wearing L’Artisan Ananas Fizz, from the original pineapple-top bottle. It will be perfect for the hot weather we’re expecting today…
The Museu del Perfum
Some vintage perfume bottle porn: an 18+ minute slideshow of a visit to the Museu del Perfum in Barcelona. Prepare to drool. Props to Leah Lefevre, who has some other perfume-related slideshows on Youtube as well.
Glamour Icons by Marc Rosen ~ perfume books
In the foreword to Glamour Icons: Perfume Bottle Design, Metropolitan Museum of Art curator Harold Koda discusses working with the author, Fifi-winning bottle designer Marc Rosen, on a perfume packaging exhibition (“Scents of Time”, for anyone lucky enough to have seen it in the mid-1980s). He credits Rosen with “a presentation that was at once scholarly and visually arresting.” That just about sums up Glamour Icons as well.
I didn’t know Rosen’s name before I read this book, but I’ve been a fan of his work since I can remember. Elizabeth Arden’s Red Door fragrance was a fixture on my childhood Christmas and birthday lists because of the little gold key charm that often graces the bottle. For grown-ups, of course, the design evokes the signature entryways to Arden salons. I took it as a reference to The Secret Garden, but that just goes to show how perfectly Rosen executed his message: “Here is your key to a private world meant just for you.” The Fifi judges must have agreed, since Red Door took home the award for best perfume bottle of the year in 1990. (My mother saw Vanilla Fields as a more appropriate message for a six-year-old; I never did get a bottle of Red Door…)
Lazy Tuesday poll ~ bottle talk
Today's poll was suggested by Becca, who wants to talk about perfume bottles: the weirdest, wackiest, ugliest, prettiest, most stately, whatever! Nominate your favorites (or least favorites), and in honor of Marc Jacobs, I'd like to add two more categories: good tacky and bad tacky.
A side note: circumstances prevented me from posting the Monday Mail yesterday, but look for it tomorrow.
Note: image is Réplique under glass [cropped] by Jean-François Chénier at flickr; some rights reserved.