– II –

All perfume commercials attempt to be art films. They are self-delusional creative concepts attempting to run from the fact that they are advertisements. After all advertisements is the lowest form of creativity. Just as marketing is the popular choice of business degrees. These commercials are just baffling. In canyons, to secret springs, deserts, and gold lotus like flowers, are meant to symbolize a deity of an alien world; or there’s the blue Mediterranean seascape with its models in white revealing swimwear, with an Italian soundtrack of sensuality; or a man in revealing swimwear surfacing from the monochrome depths of the sea. Then of course there is Greek mythic tropes, sculpted men on the verge of nudity; the zenith of legendary elegance of Versailles; the LED lit urban landscape; the sparkling romantic city of Paris. The tropes go on, I assure you. What I don’t understand is: why? Perhaps its because scent is abstract, escaping the linguistically tangible, which forces us to enact archetypes that are mythic, sensual, and sexually abstract in their visualizations. Affirming realizations of what we don’t have. Luxuries, elegance, fame or fortune. Yet with a specific perfume or cologne, you smell as if you have. Fashion is the illusion of depth for the superficial. The carapace of grandeur concealing delusions.