I received a promotional packet the other day from upscale niche fragrance company Bond No. 9 New York in regards to their recent Andy Warhol Union Square release. I had previously mentioned their Andy Warhol Silver Factory and New Harlem perfumes, so I must have pinged their radar in that respect — but those mentions weren’t that long ago, which means they must either have a crack PR team, or they have a PR team on crack.
Hey, when you’re attempting to struggle to the top in a city that never sleeps, you do what you have to do.
The promotional pack includes some pages of typical marketing prose (though at least it’s well written typical marketing prose), three decent sized samples of the Andy Warhol Union Square fragrance wrapped like candies in bright fuchsia cellophane (fuchsia for spring — spot-on trendy), plus large, shiny photo-prints of the splashy Union Square bottle and shots of the Bond No. 9 flagship store in New York.
It’s a nicely thought out PR package for a nicely thought out fragrance.
Bond No. 9 New York portrays itself as an uptown fragrance company with a downtown edge, and its partnership with the Warhol estate was a brilliant move on their part as the Warhol legacy is the near perfect embodiment of that very ideal.
But back to the perfume!
Andy Warhol Union Square possesses a uniquely glass-and-steel skyscraper with flower beds at the entrance quality — a floral fragrance that recognizes the importance of context. It embraces angles and edges in favor of powders and puffs, the incorporation of metallic tangs and snappy greens adding some spine to what would otherwise have been an ordinary mix of white flowers and light musks.
I would say an abstraction of flowers in an idea of a metropolis would nicely sum up its impact, its stylized character fitting hand in glove with the Warholian pedigree. If I close my eyes, I can almost picture standing on a Manhattan street corner on a Spring morning, the glossy wafts of a freshly mown, flower-buds bursting Central Park drifting through the urban canyons of metal and glass.
It’s a good concept in the contemporary-abstract genre, and it’s executed with finesse. With its pop-art packaging and exclusive appeal, Union Square would be an exceptional feminine for the female urban warrior, clutching her patent leather briefcase as she flags down the last available rush hour taxi on Lexington Avenue.
