Here’s the development meeting for Serge Lutens’ Clair de Musc as I imagine it:
Exec #1: “Our financials aren’t what we were hoping for this quarter.”
Exec #2: “The entire industry appears to be in slow growth mode at the moment, but did you see the numbers for Estee Lauder?”
Exec #1: *groans* “Don’t talk to me about Estee Lauder! If we could only do a fraction of Estee Lauder’s business, I’d be a very happy man.”
Perfumer: “I know what we can do.”
Exec #1 and #2: “What?!”
Perfumer: “It’s simple, really. The people who buy our perfumes do so because they want to wear something that not everyone else is wearing — because we have a reputation as an exclusive, luxury line of fragrances with a price point that separates the boutique consumer from the drugstore masses.”
Exec #1: “Right? So?”
Exec #2: “Get to the point!”
Perfumer: “So why don’t we make a perfume for our boutiques that smells exactly like some hugely popular fragrance you’d buy at a drugstore — like something from Estee Lauder; perhaps, say, Pure White Linen. We could rope in a much broader customer base than what we have already, we won’t have to test market it because we’ll already know that millions of people will love it and the ingredient cost will be low — but it’ll have our name on it, we’ll put it in a schmancy-fancy bottle, consumers will only be able to purchase it at high-end department stores and boutiques and we’ll charge twice as much as what Estee Lauder charges for Pure White Linen. It’ll be a hit and we’ll make a fortune.”
Exec #1: “YOU’RE A GENIUS!!!!”
Exec #2: “When can it be ready?”
Perfumer: “As luck would have it, I have something like this developed and on hold in the back. All we need to do is slap a name on it and we’re done.”
Exec #1: “But how will we market it?”
Exec #2: “We’ll have to pretend it’s something that it’s not.”
Exec #1: “Yes, like something daring, or completely contradictory.”
Perfumer: “A musk that doesn’t smell like a musk?”
Exec #1: *faints dead away*
Exec #2: “We really must see about getting you a raise . . . “
Marina from Perfume Smellin’ Things went on a rapturous bender when she wrote about Clair de Musc, stating that “Clair de Musc is purity and light that is out of this world . . . cool and perfectly clear, like water from Galadriel’s pitcher, running to feel The Mirror of Seeing.”
Whatever the hell that means.
I never earned my merit badge in Medieval Renaissance Festival Geekdom, so my ability to translate is severely limited; however, if by “purity and light that is out of this world”, Marina actually means that Clair de Musc smells like a near note-perfect replica of a much cheaper generation of perfumes that have taken their inspiration from none other than the lowly Johnson & Johnson’s Baby Powder, then let’s all drink from Galadriel’s Pitcher and run onward to the Mirror of Seeing! . . . or, uh, something like that.
What I can tell you for certain is that, as of this writing, the very powdery and brightly pretty Clair de Musc is $120 for 1.7 ounces. Donna Karan’s Cashmere Mist, which is also very powdery, brightly pretty and nearly identical in all respects to Clair de Musc, is $70.00 for 1.7 ounces.
I’m sure you can do the math.
